Keep away, damn Yankees
Florida State has own ideas about justice for players
Well, y’all, if there’s anybody left who thinks Florida State is anything but a football team with a university attached, we now have this:
Two star Seminoles players were involved in a car wreck at 2:37 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 5, in which both their car and another were totaled. What did the star players do? They ran, of course.
Had they been drinking? Were they wasted? Were they fried on weed or speed?
We wouldn’t know because they weren’t tested by police for drugs or alcohol when they returned to the scene later, and, according to the New York Times, no cop even asked the driver— All-American cornerback P.J. Williams, who was driving on a suspended license— whether he had been drinking.
Williams wasn’t cited for hit-and-run or anything of the sort. He got two traffic tickets for $392, which still haven’t been paid. As of this writing, his license still is suspended. Of course, this never affected his playing status.
The Times reported that none of this even made the Tallahassee (Florida) Police Department’s public online database because of a ‘‘technical glitch.’’
So what did the school do when the story came out? Blamed the Times, of course.
‘‘We are disturbed that a newspaper with a distinguished reputation would print such a speculative story,’’ university president John Thrasher said.
Damn right! Them Yankees better stay north of the Mason-Dixon Line, y’all hear?
Florida State is No. 3 in the College Football Playoff rankings and visited Miami on Saturday. The first playoff is coming up soon. All those outsiders trying to get Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Jame is Winston suspended for alleged rape had better shut up, too.
We’ve got swamps down here in Tallahassee, and folks can disappear in ’em. Git it?
THIS COMES AT THE SAME TIME the Seminole Boosters fired comptroller Sanford Lovingood after accusing him of ‘‘misappropriating’’ between $500,000 and $700,000. The money seems to have gone somewhere, and nobody knows where.
Lovingood— or somebody else— might have been doing what with it, buying gator bait? Buying jewelry for the missus? Buying a fullback from Jacksonville or a nose guard from Ocala?
Shame on me for even thinking such a thing. By the way, I wonder who owns Thrasher’s sorry behind. Those same boosters? Williams’ and Winston’s unnamed agents? Coach Jimbo Fisher?
Or maybe he reports directly to the TV networks and the NFL.
EVERYONE WAS DISHEARTENED when St. Louis Cardinals outfield prospect Oscar Taveras crashed his car in the Dominican Republic last month, killing himself and his 18-year-old girlfriend.
Several of his Cardinals teammates were pallbearers at his funeral, and team chairman William DeWitt Jr. issued a statement saying the organization was ‘‘stunned and deeply saddened by the tragic loss. . . . Oscar was an amazing talent with a bright future who was taken from us well before his time.’’
It was tragic, but Taveras was so drunk at the time of the crash— five times the legal limit in the Dominican Republic— he probably didn’t know what was happening.
His reported blood-alcohol level of .287 had him so blotto that, according to Be Responsible About Drinking, ‘‘all mental and physical and sensory functions [were] severely impaired . . . [with] increased risk of asphyxiation from choking on vomit.’’
The Cardinals lost pitcher Josh Hancock in 2007, when he fatally crashed his car near Busch Stadium with a blood-alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit.
We all remember when then-Cardinals manager Tony La Russa was found asleep and drunk in his car at a stoplight that same year during spring training in Florida.
It’s a tough thing, being a man and doing the right thing, knowing when to say no. Maybe the hardest thing we men have to learn.
HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL is one of the most treasured things in American society. It symbolizes so much that is good about our country. But it’s hard not to worry about the sport, one that is being attacked at many levels— personal, scientific, moral, insurance-related— because of the brain and spinal-cord injuries it can cause.
Nine high school players have died this season because trauma, the most directly related to the sport in more than a quarter-century.
LeBron James has said he won’t let his two sons, ages 10 and 7, play football because of the health risks.
‘‘Only basketball, baseball and soccer allowed in my house,’’ he told ESPN.
Not good. Do something, football.