Jameis Winston is, indisputably, the best crunch-time player in college football. Is that a valid reason for claiming he should be the 2014 Heisman Trophy winner? Yes… and therein lies the source of an important discussion about this prestigious individual award.

Jameis Winston And The Week That Was: What Have We Learned (If Anything)?

Human beings are different to begin with. Put a contentious, lightning-rod issue before a group of people, in an editorial room or anywhere else, and you’ll probably get a different set of responses. Then throw into the pot a few more ingredients: elements of geography, school or conference affiliation, and deeply personal experiences related to the issues involved. You’re going to get strongly clashing views, which — when weighed against each other — create a dynamic that’s conducive to critical thinking, to the stretching of the mind and its wondrous capability to engage in moral and ethical reasoning, something your beloved dog or cat can’t do.

Yes, in the wake of situations such as the Jameis Winston circus from last week, your dog or cat is probably happy to not have to engage in critical thinking, but for the rest of us, it’s necessary.

A question arises in relation to this: In sports, should blogs and other publications have to write about topics that don’t expressly relate to on-field happenings? It’s a more-than-fair question; actually, it’s an essential one, and it’s raised by one of the panelists in this special single-issue edition of the Editors’ Roundtable at The Student Section. What you’ll find below are three very different reactions to the same question, giving you a chance to see where you fall on the spectrum of opinion in the wake of a chaotic week at Florida State University.

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Is there an important insight to be found from the past week at Florida State, especially in relationship to Jameis Winston, or is this an issue that needs to be allowed to cool down before people will be in a position to really listen to reason?

Bart Doan:

On Twitter @TheCoachBart

The only insight was one we probably already knew, and that’s the one that people are way too damn sensitive. Look, suspend Winston for being part of a rape investigation or five finger discounting some crab legs, whatever, but let’s ease up on the words stuff. The old saying, sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you? It’s sort of not true, but the collective outrage people have for what people say rather than what they do is borderline absurd.

This might come as a shock to the media, but guys don’t sit around in college playing Yahtzee and drinking Capri Sun on Saturday nights. Sometimes, foul language is used. Like just about every other college conversation, ever.

I’m not saying it’s couth, right, tasteful, whatever, but the relative outrage people have over what people say in relation to what they actually do is mind numbing. If social media’s offended (and let’s be honest, social media is made up of 90 percent of people who live to be offended), then something MUST be done.

If there’s anything to really learn from it, it’s for schools to understand the level of media and public scrutiny over an athlete that wins the Heisman. If you have one in the future that is returning, a plan better be in place both with the athlete and the school to triage the obsession over every little thing that will follow that athlete, especially if he’s a freshman.

It will be “build ‘em up and then break ‘em down.” If we gave half the amount of attention to things that matter in this world as we do a college kid standing on a table and immaturely cussing, some things in this world might actually change for the better. Preachy rant over.

Terry Johnson:

On Twitter @SectionTPJ

Here’s the only relevant lesson that we learned: Florida State knows how to overcome adversity. Despite playing without its best player, the Seminoles found a way to win the game. When it comes time to select the four best teams for the field, the Selection Committee will remember the way that the ‘Noles made the plays that they needed to at crunch time. Whether it was the team rallying behind Sean Maguire or the defense overcoming the loss Mario Edwards in the second half, FSU found a way to get the job done.

With that said, I think Winston received way too much media coverage this weekend. Yes, the network was correct to discuss the merits of his suspension.

However, the constant bombardment of people commenting on the topic was the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to kill a cockroach. ESPN didn’t have to devote as much time to the topic as it did on GameDay, nor did the game broadcast have to cut over to Winston every time that something happened. By doing so, the four-letter network gave a suspended player all of the attention, rather than the players on the gridiron who busted their tails to get ready for the game by doing things the right way.

That is not the type of message the self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in sports” needs to be sending. It should have focused its attention on those that did the right thing rather than highlighting someone who didn’t.

Translation: stick with covering sports, it’s what you do best. If I want to know how to feel about social issues or topics outside the world of sports, I will do my own research, and draw my own conclusions.

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Matt Zemek:

On Twitter @SectionMZ

According to TSS editor Matt Zemek, the case of San Francisco 49er defensive lineman Ray McDonald should be thought about in connection with the way Jameis Winston has been handled by Florida State, dating back to last November. Zemek says that being guilty in the eyes of the law and being guilty of using questionable judgment are not always one and the same thing. A player can be innocent of a crime and yet still display a lack of prudence, which generally creates a lot of contentious situations enveloping intimate relationships or the mere attempt to  forge said relationships. Sitting out for one game while the facts of a situation are pursued in greater detail should not be seen as a violation of a young man's basic rights. Had Winston been sat down for the ACC Championship Game against Duke last December, he might not have continued to make more unwise decisions in recent months and, moreover, last week.

According to TSS editor Matt Zemek, the case of San Francisco 49er defensive lineman Ray McDonald should be thought about in connection with the way Jameis Winston has been handled by Florida State, dating back to last November. Zemek says that being guilty in the eyes of the law and being guilty of using questionable judgment are not always one and the same thing. A player can be innocent of a crime and yet still display a lack of prudence, which generally creates a lot of contentious situations enveloping intimate relationships or the mere attempt to forge said relationships. Sitting out for one game while the facts of a situation are pursued in greater detail should not be seen as a violation of a young man’s basic rights. Had Winston been sat down for the ACC Championship Game against Duke last December, he might not have continued to make more unwise decisions in recent months and, moreover, last week.

There are two things I’d like to say about this matter.

First, it is just about impossible to think that the way Florida State handled this situation — while also governed by Title IX concerns — was not in some small way influenced by the past few weeks of incidents in the NFL.

The events that have swamped the NFL in September of 2014 have created more national awareness about a number of intersecting tension points related to domestic violence, the way men and women relate to each other, the way prominent athletes are (and aren’t) treated by people in positions of power, and other matters. Will this awareness stick? Probably not. It is a temporary surge of attention in a society with a short attention span.

Yet, the series of headline-generating events was so constant, with virtually no space or time between them, that a point of critical mass was created… enough, at least, to make something such as Winston’s latest incident receive more scrutiny than it deserved. (Judging from the comments of my fellow editors on this panel, it seems clear that we are all in agreement that this Winston incident received far more attention than it deserved.)

This doesn’t make the avalanche of media scrutiny more enlightened. However, it magnifies a central fact of American life for high-profile collegiate athletes: Throwing morality or ethics to the side for a moment (that phrase might draw a knowing chuckle from a quarter or two), college athletes need to realize that their words and actions can and will ripple across the internet if they’re controversial enough. For Winston to get caught in this mess after all he’s been through in separate previous instances shows a worrisome lack of boundaries, a lack of awareness about how he must modify his behavior. This is not spoken from a moral or ethical vantage point, but from a businessman’s view. Winston can play football really well, but:

A) NFL teams are surely going to worry about how he handles himself off the field;

B) He could become the next Ryan Leaf.

Simply for the sake of maximizing his career (forget morality for the moment), where are mentors and other grown-ups in Winston’s circles? If mentors have told him 38,273 times in the past few days to be newly responsible, prudent, and generally quiet in his off-field doings, Winston can no longer have any excuses if his career fails to pan out. Yet, the fact that we even got to this point last week suggests that the people around him weren’t anywhere close to being firm enough in laying out a behavioral roadmap for him.

Here’s the second key point to make about L’Affaire Winston:

The NFL is showing us that just because a player (Ray McDonald of the San Francisco 49ers) hasn’t been charged with a crime, he shouldn’t necessarily be allowed to play the next gameday while an investigation and/or appeals process runs its course. This relates to Winston in an indirect but important way.

If you haven’t really thought about the matter before, think about it now: If a player gets entangled in a messy situation, it is certainly possible that he was victimized in a case of entrapment, a complete fabrication on the part of another person (a woman) who made up a story out of thin air, knowing that at least some people might take her story seriously. This happens from time to time. Yet, if a situation becomes contentious enough for a young woman to either file a complaint or at least consider the matter, the generally reasonable assumption to make is that the young man did something unwise at some point along the way. Yes, situations should be viewed on a case-by-case basis, but when looking at the larger realm of these kinds of matters, people typically aren’t moved to complain to law enforcement or the legal system just for kicks. Most of us just want to live our lives. Entrapment is not a “default setting” for young people in the relationships they seek.

The initial incident which got Winston into trouble last November was and is an incident in which Winston was never found to be guilty of rape in the eyes of the law. One should not assume that a person was or is guilty before the law, instead waiting for the facts of the matter to prove as much. However, even when a person is innocent in the eyes of the law, it can still be said that a person is often (though not always) guilty of being imprudent, or a little too uncautious, or a little too loose in terms of setting boundaries for himself or failing to respect the wishes of another person.

One can be innocent before the law yet guilty of being unwise. NFL teams should not withhold pay from players while an appeals process continues, but sitting them out of games is something that seems necessary if there is indeed legitimate doubt about the extent of a player’s involvement in an incident involving the treatment (and holistic well-being of) a young woman. When NFL teams play their star players despite these questions, the message is all too obvious: We care about winning each and every game more than waiting to see exactly how the facts stack up in a case of great consequence. Withholding of pay or banishment from the team are violations of the player’s rights, not sitting him down for a game. What is one game in the larger scheme of things?

The natural sticking point in college football is that since there’s no take-home paycheck to give to a college player such as Winston, the severity of sitting out one game is greater than it is for the professional player, who still collects his money. (Think of Adrian Peterson with the Vikings right now.) In many ways, this incident with Winston shows why college athletes, especially in the big-ticket sports, need a union, but that’s a separate conversation for another day.

Back to the subject at hand: If there is a strong sense that a given charge is completely baseless — not mostly, but completely — and a relatively quick follow-up with all relevant parties indicates as much, a player can reasonably be allowed to play in a game following an incident, though the decision should not be made lightly. If, though, there is any sticking point, any indication of a lingering, contentious quality to a dispute which continues to put an incident and its details into question, the inclination on the part of a pro team or a school should be to sit that player down, at least for a half, to tell that player that the lack of clarity is in part a reflection of his inability to handle a situation properly.

This explanation, while perhaps longer than you would have preferred, was necessary to flesh out this next central point: If Winston had been suspended for all or part of the ACC Championship Game against Duke and had to face the loss of playing time last December, he might not have done what he did last week, and this mess could have been avoided. A little bit of punishment up front could have prevented this incongruent and contextually unfair punishment last week. This felt like a “three strikes law” being handed down to Winston, with the third strike being for a much softer offense than the previous two. That’s not right… but it’s partly because Florida State never seemed to realize what NFL teams realize now: Players can be innocent until proven guilty in a legal realm… but if they’re guilty of displaying a lack of prudence, they should sit out a game and be made to learn that their lack of prudence is, in itself, something which should carry consequences, ideally enough to get them to modify their behavior.

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