Why I’ll Root For Florida State and Jameis Winston
By J.P. Scott
The more hate I see directed at Florida State, the more inclined I become to pull for Jameis Winston and the Seminoles.
I had three channels growing up: 3, 5 and 9 — NBC, CBS and ABC. They didn’t run cable as far outside of town as I lived and satellite TV was still relatively expensive. As such, my choices were limited, especially when it came to watching sports. Basically, if there was an athletic competition on one of those three channels, I was watching it. It didn’t matter if it was football or bowling.
I was drawn to sports — mainly football — in those days as an escape from troubles at school and sometimes at home. I didn’t care much for local or national news, because as is the case now, most of it was negative and filled with depressing drama. I craved drama of a different sort. I craved the drama that happens in athletic competition.
I’m the same way today. Now in my mid-30s, give me a choice between billiards on any of the dozen sports networks available to me and a story about some tragedy in the world that I can’t control and really has little impact on my life — I’m taking the billiards every time.
The 24/7 media cycle has tried its best to take that away from me. No longer can I tune out the terrible things in the world by escaping into sports. The people who capitalize on those terrible things have infiltrated my safe place. They’ve decided to pull sports into the mess. They’ve decided to highlight all of the terrible things that go on in and around sports.
Jameis Winston and the Florida State Seminoles are all too familiar with this.
It was bad enough that their swagger over the years had made them one of college football’s most hated teams. Now they had to deal with rape allegations against their star player in the middle of a title run in 2013. It didn’t faze them.
Then in 2014, the Winston news didn’t subside. The story lived on through controversy regarding whether or not Florida State would suspend him. And then there was the crablegs incident. Shoplifting is a dumb thing plenty of young people do. And let’s not forget the unfortunate phrase Winston decided to yell in the middle of the student union. Another dumb thing college kids do.
Let us not forget, Jameis Winston is a college student. The fact that he plays college football doesn’t change that, and quite frankly, I’m tired of the “athletes need to be held to a higher standard” schtick. They don’t — not anymore than med students do.
Again, neither Winston nor the rest of the Seminoles were fazed by any of this. But I was.
I just want to watch football. I want my football news to be about the game and what happens on the field of play. Rape allegation? No charges? Why are we talking about it? There are errors in plenty of investigations. I trust the legal system and law enforcement in this country. Maybe I’m naive. I guess I underestimate the modern day court of public opinion, where the idea of being innocent until proven guilty has evolved into an old fairy tale we learned about in grade school.
I just want to watch football, so I change the channel. Nope, still drama, with sports as the backdrop. So I hop on the internet and check out some fan groups. Maybe I can find some good sports talk there. No dice, as all I get are Florida State fans defending themselves and their program against attacks involving off-field issues or their strength of schedule.
Let’s talk about that strength of schedule.
Every team on Florida State’s schedule with the exception of the Citadel is a member of the Power-5 (I’m including Notre Dame). Four of the teams the Seminoles faced in 2014 were ranked at kickoff. Florida State beat one of them — Clemson — without Jameis Winston. Ten teams on their schedule will play in bowl games this season.
Florida State won every single one of those games. There was no loss to Arizona. There was no loss to Virginia Tech. There was no loss to Ole Miss.
The Florida State football team has not tasted defeat since November 24, 2012.
I’m a Big Ten guy. I own a Big Ten blog. I towed the Big Ten line all year and lobbied for the Big Ten to be represented in the College Football Playoff. Mission accomplished. Good luck to the Buckeyes.
Now the second season begins.
Now, even if only for one game. I’m a Florida State guy. I’m a guy who respects winning. I’m a guy who respects winning with a target on your back. I’m a guy who respects winning in crunch-time without your best player — a player who might be the best quarter back in the nation — awards be damned. I’m a guy who respects that Florida State is able to go out week after week, ignore all of the drama and distractions and bring home the most important and increasingly most overlooked stat in sports: A win.
After the nauseating flood of media attention paid to all of the negatives of the Florida State football program over the past year, I’m now — like Heath Ledger’s joker — a guy who just wants to watch the college football world burn. I want to see Jameis Winston holding up the College Football Playoff Trophy in a thick fog of confetti, flashing that familiar grin. I want all of the college football fans on the message boards and groups I’ve visited to feel the same sort of nausea I’ve felt for a while now as I’ve tried to escape the drama.
They won’t won’t be able to get away from it. Jameis Winston’s face will be on every magazine cover, every website, and every Florida State fan-created meme. His face will be on every sports channel on television for a week.
Every college football fan not wearing garnet and gold will wish that they only had channels 3, 5 and 9.