Guest AuthorIn this football-mad state capital, Famous Jameis Winston is so much more important than Rick Scott, and what goes on at Doak Campbell Stadium is more relevant than happenings at the Capitol.
There are probably more prayers being offered from pulpits for the Florida State quarterback than for the stricken people of the Philippines. Yes, the most famous arm in Florida got lots of mentions during recent Sunday services.
Someone said Seminole fans worship Christ on Sundays and Jameis on Saturdays, but the garnet and gold has been bleeding into the Sabbath.
There are few limits to the Winston worship in Seminole nation. That’s why the way local authorities have handled sexual assault allegations against the frontrunner for this year’s Heisman Trophy is so troubling.
By now you must have heard the story. Last December, a female FSU student met Winston at a bar and the evening ended with sex. Those facts are not in dispute. The only question is whether it was sex or sexual assault — a charge Winston’s lawyer and a legion of fans deny. So far we have much more than a case of ‘he said, she said.’ Events get murkier by the day.
The Tallahassee city manager told her bosses on the City Commission the investigation stopped after the woman refused to forge ahead with charges. We later learned the woman opted to put the brakes on after the investigating detective warned her that Tallahassee is a football town and people would make her life miserable.
He was right and also dead wrong. The Winston worshippers have embarked on an electronic lynching of his accuser. She withdrew from school. It will take years to undo the damage of the last few weeks.
The Seminole nation has not just been hostile toward the national media. The Tallahassee Democrat belatedly learned that journalism and fandom are incompatible. Some readers threatened to drop their subscription when the paper stopped cheering for Winston and started covering the sex-assault story.
Did I say the TPD detective was also wrong? This case was bungled from the beginning. Winston, guilty or not, got the rich- white-boy treatment in the name of football glory. The detective was wrong to discourage the victim from pursuing charges. Maybe I’ve been watching too much “Law & Order: SVU.” The voice of Det. Olivia Benson is lodged deep in my head.
The Tallahassee detective took his eyes off justice; he was looking at the end zone. Like the legions of fans with season tickets to Doak Campbell, he wished that this case would just go away. He’s wrong. It won’t, not even if the state attorney’s office decides not to prosecute Winston.
The more you hear about this case, the worse the Tallahassee Police Department looks. The more you hear about this case, the more troubled you become about how our worship of college sports contaminates our values and skews our sense of right and wrong. Justice sacrificed in pursuit of a mythic national championship is justice denied: for Winston and, especially, for his accuser.
2 comments
Martin A. Dyckman
November 26, 2013 at 10:11 am
Well said. Very well said. I enjoy watching football, but if the choice were put to me between continuing big-time college sports as they are or abolishing them, I’d go with the latter. The perversion of values–and, in this case, the potential perversion of justice–are too harmful to tolerate.
Wisdom personified
November 26, 2013 at 5:31 pm
The column vividly illustrates that football fanaticism skews at least the author’s own sense of reality.
What other explanation could possibly exist to explain why a supposedly ethical journalist reports disputed information as fact? Why else would a reputable African-American writer use racially insensitive language to argue, based on disputed facts, that a young African-American male who has not been charged with a crime received preferential treatment? Why else would a college professor at a historically black university throw out the entire notion of innocent until proven guilty when it comes to a young African-American male without at least hearing his side of the story? Why would an intelligent man promote negative stereotypes of the people of his hometown, football fans (FSU fans especially), and law enforcement?
I would suggest that the answer to these questions is stated in the title of the column. Surely, the professor has fallen victim to the same reactionary behavior that he rightfully laments. He simply represents the other extreme. All the while, the damage done to two young people and their families continues to compound. That’s why I pray that a swift and just resolution is imminent.
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