Jameis Winston: Florida State star needs to grow up

I would never advocate violence again anyone, but someone in the greater Tallahassee area needs to grab Jameis Winston and slap some sense into him.

The reigning Heisman Trophy winner made an ass of himself again this week and, as a result, will be suspended for the first half of No. 1 Florida State’s Saturday showdown with No. 22 Clemson. Some will say Winston jumping on a table, grabbing his crotch and yelling obscenities was just him “being a college kid.” Unfortunately for the 20-year-old, he’s not just another college kid, and I seriously doubt many average Florida State students would have cost themselves millions of dollars by doing that kind of thing.

As if allegations of sexual assault, a botched investigation and a subsequent Title IX inquiry weren’t enough, Winston was also caught shoplifting crab legs from a Publix supermarket this spring. After the public backlash he faced over those incidents, you’d figure he would be smart enough to grow up, keep his head down and focus on school and football. Apparently the kid just doesn’t get it.

Scouts have come out in droves this week declaring that Winston’s immaturity is killing his draft stock. For a guy who will likely be playing professional football a year from now, that’s not good to hear. No one doubts the redshirt sophomore’s physical abilities, but since the spring his draft status has been dropping faster than Sea World’s stock.

On Thursday, ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. dropped Winston from third to 25th on his Big Board (and said he almost took him off completely) due to his off-field issues. Dane Brugler of CBS Sports says scouts are telling him they are far more concerned with Winston’s issues than they were with Johnny Manziel’s. Another NFL scout told Yahoo!’s Dan Wetzel that Winston “keeps filling up the ‘recurring stupidity’ column.”

Can anyone really argue with any of those assessments given what we’ve seen from Winston over the past two years? In fact, doing something mind-bogglingly idiotic to ruin one’s draft stock can now officially be termed “pulling a Jameis Winston.”

The NFL landscape is rapidly changing and it has become increasingly clear that off-field incidents will not be tolerated. After all, it’s not a right to make millions of dollars playing professional football, it’s a privilege. Teams and the league are slowly coming around to the fact that their players must be held to a higher standard. People are tired of professional athletes getting away with abhorrent behavior. Winston would be wise to take notice

It’s not like anyone was accusing Winston of being an angel before the sexual assault allegation came to light last year. Before that, he was involved in two more incidents in which police were called. Winston and a few teammates were questioned by the police following a BB gun fight in 2012 that broke windows, and he was also implicated in an incident at a Burger King in July 2013 where he and three others were accused of shoplifting soda in ketchup cups.

Somehow, despite all of those incidents, Saturday’s game will be the first time Winston has missed any time on the football field because of his behavior. Florida State interim president Dr. Garnett S. Stokes, and athletic director Stan Wilcox were clearly fed up with Winston embarrassing the university and were ready to teach him a serious lesson. So they suspended him…for 30 minutes.

Thirty minutes?!? That’s a whole 1,800 seconds. Why didn’t they just tell him to go sit in the corner and think about what he’s done? Instead of a hammer, Stokes, Wilcox and Seminoles head coach Jimbo Fisher dropped the ball.

Winston has had six off-field incidents since arriving in Tallahassee in 2012. So, instead of “three-strikes and you’re out,” Florida State apparently subscribes to a rigid “six-strikes and you get to take a few drives off” system. It’s embarrassing and this whole thing smells worse than Door County, Wisconsin does right about now.

After the shoplifting incident Winston issued a statement, part of which read, “I must realize that my mistakes are magnified and can bring great embarrassment to all those who support me every day.” It’s fairly safe to say he has yet to make that realization.

Since Florida State clearly doesn’t care about looking like a joke, in the end, the only person Winston’s antics are hurting is himself.

In a few months at the 2015 NFL Draft, Winston will almost certainly be the top candidate to “pull a Brady Quinn.” But he won’t have to worry about that for a while. For now he’s still just the top candidate to “pull a Jameis Winston.”

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