The player being discussed most frequently in the glacial walk-up to the selection of college talent by professional teams is Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston.
Winston, who won college football’s most highly publicized award, the Heisman Trophy, as a freshman, is leaving the Tallahassee campus after two impressive seasons, one of which culminated in a national championship. Winston is said to have all of the necessary tools to play quarterback in the NFL, from a strong arm and swift legs to exceptional leadership qualities. His name is being bandied about as being the first player chosen in the draft by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who earned the first selection by virtue of the league’s worst record.
However, Winston’s "leadership" appears appropriate only when placed in the context of what he can do on a football field. In other settings, Jameis Winston has hardly provided the kind of example you’d expect from someone called a leader. During a nearly two year span, Winston, who also played on the FSU baseball team, allegedly took part in incidents that involved shooting pellet and BB guns in an apartment, stealing soda from a local fast food restaurant, taking crab legs from a supermarket and standing on a dining hall table and yelling a sexually explicit saying.
However juvenile those deeds may seem, they pale in comparison to the December 2012 incident in which Winston was accused of raping a campus coed.
The alleged victim has said she met Winston at an off-campus bar and had a shot of liquor that Winston offered her. The woman said she shared a cab with Winston and two of his teammates to their apartment.
There, the woman alleges, Winston took her to her bedroom, removed her clothing and had sex with her against her will, while the teammates watched, one of them filming the incident. Later, the woman claims, she was carried to a bathroom, where she was raped again. Winston has acknowledged having sex with the woman, but has maintained that the encounter was consensual in nature.
The local state’s attorney declined to file charges, claiming there was not enough evidence to convict Winston. A Florida State University judicial proceeding, in which Winston and the teammates declined to testify, also failed to bring charges.
The alleged victim filed a lawsuit against Winston last week, claiming that one of his teammates expressed remorse about the events on social media. The suit also alleges that Winston may have been the perpetrator in a second rape case.
Winston’s attorney, David Cornwell, wasted no time calling the suit a stunt, contending that Winston has been cleared six times already of the charges.
That may be, but Cornwell also recently said that while Winston is ready to be an NFL player on the field, he wasn’t ready to be one off the field.
Sadly, there will be at least one NFL team that won’t understand the distinction