Lost in the revelation of the 2015 regular-season schedule on Tuesday night was an interesting college football nugget that relates directly to the likely first pick in the draft. As it turns out, the head coach at Florida State University contends that the program once unofficially known as Free Shoes University should not now be unofficially known as Free Shellfish University.
As Gantt noted earlier in the day, former Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston explained to Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh during a Draft Academy feature on ESPN that Winston’s notorious crab-leg caper from 2014 arose not from a blatant act of shoplifting but from a potentially flagrant violation of NCAA rules.
“Well, a week before it was my buddy’s birthday and we had got a cake and we met a dude that worked inside Publix and he said, ‘Hey, anytime you come in here, I got you.’” Winston said. “So that day we just walked out and he hooked us up with that.
“And when I went in to get crab legs, did the same thing and he just gave them to me and I walked out. Someone from inside the store had told the security that I didn’t pay for them, and that’s how the whole thing started.”
It ended because Winston admitted to shoplifting, without explaining that it was actually wasn’t. Which could have created problems for the football program if an ensuing investigation had shown that players like Winston had been getting free stuff from local vendors.
Via Bruce Feldman of FOX Sports, coach Jimbo Fisher says that Florida State University’s NCAA compliance department investigated the matter and determined that it was an isolated incident. But if that’s the case, why didn’t someone tell the truth at the time -- especially since the truth would have erased the impression that Winston is a thief?
The more likely reality, based on Winston’s words, is that it wasn’t an isolated incident. The more likely reality, based on common sense, is that the same thing has been happening in Tallahassee and other relatively small cities that host big-time college football programs for years.
Unless and until those big-time college football programs start properly compensating the players, no one should have a problem with it.