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The week ahead is going to be bad. You and I have to be the adults and make some serious choices and I doubt most of us have even realized those choices are there, let alone contemplated their significance.
Thursday is the NFL Draft, next Saturday is the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight and the choices are about where we as sports fans, where we as human beings draw the line about domestic violence in this country. Jameis Winston is still likely to be the No 1 overall pick in that NFL Draft. Jameis Winston, with an overall public conduct record that makes Johnny Manziel look like a hall monitor, and fresh from making a public excuse for walking out of a supermarket with three pounds of crab legs that is so completely nonsensical it sounds like it was dreamt up BY THE CRAB LEGS, Jameis Winston, who more importantly is the defendant in a civil suit from a former student at his university accusing him of sexual battery, assault, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress, the suit filed after local prosecutors chose not to press charges.
Florida State held a Code of Conduct hearing in December and cleared Winston of responsibility for the incident. The accuser has now sued the school and the US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights continues its federal investigation of how FSU handled that incident. It should be noted that campus rape and sexual assault is virtually at epidemic stages in this country. From the Department of Justice there are more than 6 cases reported per thousand students, and 80% of all cases go unreported.
Why an NFL team would draft what looks to even a casual observer like a ticking time bomb, draft him in the 5th round, let alone No 1 is beyond me. As if the league or any of its teams need a potential new disasterous scandal in 2015 after how NFL negligence about domestic and family violence overshadowed 2014. However the jury is still out on Jameis Winston.... perhaps literally.
Not so with the boxer Floyd Mayweather. The juries PLURAL have already ruled on Floyd Mayweather. FIVE TIMES!!! In a report this afternoon on Outside The Lines, John Barr told us Floyd Mayweather's record of criminal violence against women "cascades down upon all of us, like an avalanche." According to records obtained by Outside The Lines, Mayweather has been CONVICTED 5 TIMES for incidents dating back more than 14 YEARS!!! FINALLY, after his 5th conviction Mayweather landed in jail, but did NOT land in any significant trouble with the people who make money off of him.
The Nevada State Athletic Commission can suspend licenses for an ARREST for anything north of a speeding ticket, yet in the case of Mayweather, with 5 CONVICTIONS for violent crimes, 3 of which were IN NEVADA, EVEN WHILE MAYWEATHER SERVED A PRISON SENTENCE, The Commission has never suspended Mayweather's license or even held a meeting to discuss the issue. In fact, NO GOVERNING BODY IN ANY STATE has ever suspended or revoked Mayweather's license to box.
You will support this poor excuse for a man?? You will help him continue to behave as if his conduct is acceptable in the 21st century?? or the 20th?? or the 19th?? I won't. I regret this deeply; I saw an interview with Manny Pacquiao last year and a quieter, more respectful, more dignified boxer I have never witnessed, may he make millions more, but I will NOT give Floyd Mayweather a dime.
That line I wrote of earlier... Mayweather is so far beyond it we can no longer even see him, and we shouldn't have to. He should have been banned for life by his sport years ago. I will not watch, discuss or even inquire about Mayweather's fight, I will boycott it completely and I urge you to do so as well. And I have grave doubts about Jameis Winston and as such have grave doubts about the integrity of the NFL Draft. I am not sure where Winston is relative to the line but since the NFL doesn't seem to care I am afraid I can't run the risk. I will boycott the draft too because when you discover that there are no other adults in the room, that the commissioners and the boxing organizations and the leagues are the money hungry children, then by the process of elimination, you have to become the adult. And WE, the reluctant adults, WE have to draw the line.
