Jamies Winston Suspended First Three Weeks

[bucsfan333]

5 minutes ago, REDandPEWTER said:

And guilty people walk away free countless times when they should be paying for it. 

Not every incident has a video (see ray rice). There are other pieces of evidence that is pretty telling. No one wants to believe that though. 

We don't know what the evidence is. That's why we're having this conversation.

[Buc Ball]

37 minutes ago, bucsfan333 said:

We don't know what the evidence is. That's why we're having this conversation.

Exactly this.

But when you hate someone so much, you don’t need to see any evidence before making your mind up.

Classic case of confirmation bias - something that the obtuse amongst us tend to fall victim to.

[Tyson Jr]

Come on man.... (big sigh) i feel he should be punished if he did do it But that sucks opening the season against the saints and eagles was already scary. Now without him it could be ugly early in the season. Stop doing dumb $#!+ jameis!!

[Buc Ball]

5 hours ago, REDandPEWTER said:

I would really have to hate to throw out a lot of Bucs merhandise if this is true. His resume is clouded with sexual misconduct. 

I dont want to get personal but I’m a strong advocate against sexual assault/DV. Nfl teams and the league have seem to not take it as seriously in general. 

So if you are willing to throw out Bucs merch over this, how did you react to the Bucs holding onto Michael Pittman in 04?

Why is it different now?

[Buc Ball]

4 minutes ago, Tyson Jr said:

Come on man.... (big sigh) i feel he should be punished if he did do it But that sucks opening the season against the saints and eagles was already scary. Now without him it could be ugly early in the season. Stop doing dumb $#!+ jameis!!

I don’t think there’s a Bucs fan who doesn’t think he should be punished if the evidence says he did it. Unfortunately, at this stage, we simply don’t have the same information the league has.

We’ll probably find out tomorrow what’s in the report.

Football wise, we might be ok. If we get the running game going and the Dline is as good as advertised, we could keep it close. Fitzpatrick showed enough last season for me not to immediately write off the first 3 games, after all, Bortles beat Pittsburgh.

[ravishingone]

A lot of questions for me how Uber handled this complaint from its driver.  Why weren t the police contacted?  Isn't it Ubers job to protect its driver's?  Wouldn't dash board video cameras be appropriate to be given to all Uber drivers?  Maybe that s being done now, never used Uber.   I m not a legal expert, but I m assuming the complaint is classified as some type of sexual misconduct under the law.  I really hope the report has more follow up on what Uber did other then suspend Winston s account,  I guess I m not surprised that the league is creating this media feeding frenzy by only giving out bits and pieces of information instead of just giving it all out at once, well because it's the NFL.

No issue with the Glazers waiting for the full report. 

[ravishingone]

I just find this tweet interesting and at this time I have nothing further to add.

[Caaddy24]

6 hours ago, bucsfan333 said:

Except the NFL suspends (and takes away hundreds of thousands of dollars) from players with no regard of the law.

It's not about what the law is. They have their personal conduct policy, into the players contract. They know all about it when they sign it, if they violate it, they'll be fined. It's simple. They decide what punishment to give them. It has nothing to do with what law was broken. 

[bucsfan333]

4 minutes ago, Caaddy24 said:

It's not about what the law is. They have their personal conduct policy, into the players contract. They know all about it when they sign it, if they violate it, they'll be fined. It's simple. They decide what punishment to give them. It has nothing to do with what law was broken. 

I know. I was responding to the idea that the NFL doesn't seem to take this seriously.

[Caaddy24]

42 minutes ago, bucsfan333 said:

I know. I was responding to the idea that the NFL doesn't seem to take this seriously.

Oh... don't mind me.

[Buc Ball]

19 hours ago, ravishingone said:

A lot of questions for me how Uber handled this complaint from its driver.  Why weren t the police contacted?  Isn't it Ubers job to protect its driver's?  Wouldn't dash board video cameras be appropriate to be given to all Uber drivers?  Maybe that s being done now, never used Uber.   I m not a legal expert, but I m assuming the complaint is classified as some type of sexual misconduct under the law.  I really hope the report has more follow up on what Uber did other then suspend Winston s account,  I guess I m not surprised that the league is creating this media feeding frenzy by only giving out bits and pieces of information instead of just giving it all out at once, well because it's the NFL.

No issue with the Glazers waiting for the full report. 

There are a lot of questions still unanswered, so hopefully the report makes everything clearer.

I don’t even think the drivers are Uber employees - technically they're self employed and Uber (claims to) merely provide a platform. They may have therefore left it completely up to the driver to take the action she deemed appropriate. Doesn’t seem particularly fair of Uber, especially given the allegations.

I don’t think police were contacted and I don’t know which law it would fall under, e.g. whether it would be considered a form of sexual assault in Arizona. I don’t think it would be, legally speaking, where I’m from.

It’ll all come out eventually.

[REDandPEWTER]

On 6/24/2018 at 4:42 PM, Buc Ball said:

So if you are willing to throw out Bucs merch over this, how did you react to the Bucs holding onto Michael Pittman in 04?

Why is it different now?

I guess to personally defend myself I was 13 years old in 2004.  So I didn’t spend a lot of time reading the news at the age. So no i don’t support it  

and I wasn’t aware of it.  Had I been a mature adult at that time I wouldn’t have root for Tampa until they dumped the trash out 

 

[bucsfan333]

 

[ravishingone]

1 hour ago, bucsfan333 said:

 

I always thought "truth and justice" were determined by federal and state laws.  I m not so sure anymore.  For the argument, that in certain examples criminals can get away with a crime, certainly that cant be argued.  However, imperfect the judicial system has become it is leaps and bounds better then most in the world.  With all the social movement currently going on, if someone is certain and passionate about a public figure getting away with something, my hope is some of that passion gets steered into improving our laws in this case to sexual abuse.  Do the standards of guilt as currently written by the law need to be changed?  I honestly don't know, but I certainly am uneasy with the NFL adding opinion to this subject when clearly they have been motivated by PR and the bottom line.

[Buc Ball]

2 hours ago, ravishingone said:

I always thought "truth and justice" were determined by federal and state laws.  I m not so sure anymore.  For the argument, that in certain examples criminals can get away with a crime, certainly that cant be argued.  However, imperfect the judicial system has become it is leaps and bounds better then most in the world.  With all the social movement currently going on, if someone is certain and passionate about a public figure getting away with something, my hope is some of that passion gets steered into improving our laws in this case to sexual abuse.  Do the standards of guilt as currently written by the law need to be changed?  I honestly don't know, but I certainly am uneasy with the NFL adding opinion to this subject when clearly they have been motivated by PR and the bottom line.

I think this is a key point in all this. It’s likely we’ll never know what happened and because of that, it all comes down to perception.

We don’t know why Winston won’t appeal. It could be for several reasons:

1) He’s guilty.

2) He doesn’t want to cause a further distraction for his team.

3) He knows he can’t win an appeal because he can’t prove he didn’t do it.

4) The NFL cut a deal with him to give him a lighter suspension in return for it not dragging on.

That’s just 4 I can think of and there could be many more. 

What’s not helpful here is the rape allegation that Winston was never even charged as a result of. The facts in that case are troubling from several perspectives, not least because bungled police and university investigations appear to have robbed either side of the chance to prove their case. 

Winston is a divisive character on the basis of this allegation and a narrative stemming from that allegation that doesn’t appear to be grounded in facts. What I think is telling about that allegation is that Winston didn’t back down in the civil case - it was apparently settled with no costs being passed to the accuser. The documentary is also very one sided and bears no resemblance to the police reports or the information on the case available in the public domain.

The unfortunate truth is that, regardless of what happened at FSU, people will think Winston was guilty of that allegation. The point is, he’ll always be linked to that allegation because the police and university don’t appear to have acted properly in this case. If they had, maybe he’d be in jail. Or maybe his name would be clear.

That gets us to our current outcome. The perception is Winston was accused before, therefore he must be guilty here, even though he was never charged. That’s the narrative that’s out there and that’s the narrative that the NFL needs to respond to.

There’s no benefit of the doubt available to Winston particularly, nor is the league in a position to give anyone the benefit of the doubt in cases of this nature.

The way forward for the league is probably to link the suspension process to actual criminal charges/ convictions and have this administered by an independent body (NFLDA?) who takes it out the hands of the NFL. The news cycle, quest for content and the number of “reporters” leads to massive media pressure - something that influences the NFL to act. In the interests of respecting due process, these decisions should be out of the NFL’s hands.

Overall, a three game suspension is not sufficient if Winston is guilty. The NFL surely can’t have enough evidence to take a definitive view on what happened, otherwise he would and should be looking at much, much longer.

Hopefully this report comes out soon and we actually find out what evidence there is. I also hope this prompts people to look at Uber’s handling of the situation and whether they provided the accuser with the appropriate support.