Why ESPN Needs You to HATE Jameis Winston and the Florida State Seminoles

Why ESPN Needs You to HATE Jameis Winston and the Florida State Seminoles


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It has been a wild and crazy past week for the Florida State Seminoles. Their QB, a magnet for controversial news ever since his stint as quarterback for the reigning national champs began last year, once again was at the top of the headlines after being suspended by FSU for a half, then a whole game, for being spotted in the student union yelling a vulgar popular online meme. While we have seen the outrage on TV and on social media forums, and even the anger coming from a small contingent of FSU alumni, we are going to tell you all something you probably didn’t realize and that never occurred to you.
ESPN and the SEC-enamored media desperately WANT you to hate Jameis Winston. They need you to despise him. They’ve been working for you to hate him for a long time. If you don’t hate him by now, you are either an FSU fan or really disconnected from the online and sports entertainment television world. Is it because Winston is one of the most disgusting, criminal minded, moronic menaces to society in sports history? Or is it because the sports media, especially ESPN, is manipulating the public into believing what they need you to believe for their own benefit and the benefit of the SEC? We are going to show you in this article why it is the latter. We are going to lay out why we believe that ESPN and the mainstream media are working overtime to destroy this kid’s character and bury his school so that they never “steal” another championship from the SEC in the near future. And we are going display to you their hypocrisy in encouraging this witch-hunt of a player whose greatest faults pale in comparison to some SEC stars who came before him.
You don’t need to be an FSU supporter to truly see what is going on here. The mainstream media, led by their “worldwide leader in sports entertainment,” is vocally railroading one of the greatest talents of our sports generation simply as revenge for him not launching his stardom in their beloved SEC. And they will not stop until both he and the team that has owned the SEC in recent years pays the ultimate price. FSU and Winston are villains to the SEC. ESPN and other media hacks are now prepared to make them YOUR villain too. If you repeat things often enough to the public in the media, ultimately they begin to believe it as truth. ESPN has been hammering away at the integrity of the FSU star around the clock since the middle of last week when news of the “scandal” broke. And public perception was definitely impacted by the biased coverage of the cursing incident. Before long, people from coast to coast were “outraged.” Outraged that a 20 year old college student cursed loud enough on campus for people to hear. [Pause for perspective to set in.]
Who is this Jameis Winston kid anyway? This horrible menace to society that has ESPN analysts screaming and pounding their makeshift desks about. When we filter out the over-the-top ESPN-driven media bias, it becomes much easier to see who he really is. Jameis Winston is a socially immature and naïve youth in a tremendously gifted athlete’s body. His athletic and on-field leadership ability is head and shoulders above his peers; he plays football like a man among boys. However mentally off the field, he is a boy among men. This is clear to anyone following along with his antics. He doesn’t take things as seriously as people think he should. Perhaps he rose too high to fast. Or perhaps he has simply just always been the “class clown” life of the party and lacks the filter necessary to know when he has gone too far. Or maybe he really is “dumb as a box of rocks” as has been suggested by multiple “respected” media personalities. (Which if true would support our position of SEC recruiting standards since Winston was heavily recruited by much of the SEC before spurning them to choose Florida State.) Much like his Heisman predecessor Johnny “Football” Manziel, Winston is showing us all why freshmen should no longer be allowed to win the Heisman. They can’t handle the attention, the pressure or the expectations that often come with the award, as it all might be too much for a 19 year old kid to process. Nothing Winston has done up to this point (sexual promiscuity, squirrel hunting with BB guns, sneaking soda from a fountain with buddies, taking crab legs from a grocery store “hookup”, or yelling out an obscene phrase from a popular internet meme) could be considered “criminal mischief” for the average 18-19 year old kid. However, Winston is not an average 19 year old kid. Much more is expected of him, and children may look to him as a role model whether they should or shouldn’t. The minute he became a football superstar, he traded in his “average joe” card. Unfortunately, he acts as if nobody told him this. Or maybe they did and he refuses to accept it. The point we are trying to make here is, Jameis Winston is not a lethal criminal mind. He is a simple and very naïve young man who refuses to let his stardom change him. And that may be his biggest mistake, because with athletic stardom comes responsibility. In turn, the media is using every single one of Winston’s mistakes, no matter how minor, as another opportunity to crucify him. We all know, this is how it works in the spotlight for sports stars. The media builds them up so they can tear them down. However, in this situation, some of the greatest effort ever witnessed is being put forth by the media, particularly ESPN, to assure that this kid not only gets torn down, but that he never plays the game of football again at FSU. Their tactics are wrong, their motivations for doing it are wrong, and the manipulative ways they are doing it are wrong.

Let’s start with their tactics. First there were the around the clock rotations of analysts one by one bashing Winston’s integrity on air. Then there was the ESPN analyst Zubin Mehenti who gave an angry rant full of racist overtones against Winston (Listen here: http://espn.go.com/espnradio/play?id=11547749). Then there was response from ESPN defending Mehenti’s rant as “free speech” (try to ignore the irony of this excuse here). And who can forget ESPN’s Mark May laying into Winston’s integrity. (Looks like the Gameday attendees in Tallahassee Saturday didn’t let him get away with that hypocrisy without some fact checking though…)

Thursday night during the Kansas State-Auburn game, one of ESPN’s favorite SEC Shills Pollack was chatting with his co-shill Palmer up in the analyst booth. Their back and forth kind of revealed much of what ESPN behind the scenes really wanted…
Pollack: I’m not sure if I’m happy about only a half game suspension for Winston.
Palmer: I am.
Pollack: I think it should be the whole game.
Palmer: Oh yeah, because then they could lose!
I’m sure you can only imagine the immense disappointment from ESPN when Clemson could not deliver ESPN’s genie wish for them.
Winston has faced far more scrutiny than likely any other college athlete who has done wrong in the media. And despite never being charged for rape because there was no evidence, even after a prosecutor dug until his nails bled trying to get notoriety for being the guy that could put away the great Jameis Winston (Source: http://secexposed.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/why-a-successful-black-non-sec-college-football-star-is-getting-railroaded-in-the-jim-crow-south/), ESPN continues to report THAT story as if it were an actual prosecuted crime! For many at ESPN, Winston is not only guilty until proven innocent, but he is even guilty WHEN proven innocent!
This begs the question, why is ESPN and the lapdog media so hungry to bury the FSU quarterback? Let’s pretend for a minute that we don’t know about their heavy campaigning to eliminate all SEC threats so that the conference their money is invested in will never have to face a real quality opponent in the four team playoff. Where is the ESPN outrage over the sheer volume of arrests (>50% of all college sports arrests) occurring out of the SEC? (Source: http://secexposed.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/criminal-talent-recruitment-and-media-collusion-make-strange-bedfellows-indeed/). Or better yet how about the closest SEC neighbor to FSU? Where was the media outrage at the University of Florida, an SEC team whose 2008 squad won the national title with arguably the most number of criminals on a championship team in NCAA history (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/sports/ncaafootball/hernandez-among-many-arrested-at-florida-in-the-meyer-years.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)? Where were the self-righteous ESPN announcers demanding that a title be stripped when it consisted of players arrested for “under-age drinking, disorderly conduct, violations of open-container laws, aggravated stalking, domestic violence by strangulation, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and fraudulent use of credit cards”; compound that with racism, rape, domestic violence and murder once these stars got to the NFL. According to the NY Times, UF had “a roster of 121 players, 41 of whom have been arrested, either in college or afterward, and sometimes both. That number included 16 players on that season’s final two-deep roster, nine of whom were starters, as well as a kicker, punter and returner.”
Perhaps these ESPN hacks would say they are only hammering away at Jameis because he is a Heisman winner and should show better judgment and meet the moral requirements of a Heisman candidate. To that I would respond… really? REALLY? How quickly our convenient memories have forgotten about the SEC’s great Cam “Scam” Newton? Unlike Winston, who has never been arrested for anything despite all the “supposed” this and “we heard him say” that, Newton was actually CHARGED with felony grand theft. From stolen laptops, multiple academic violations, being bounced from UF for cheating, to soliciting payments from the highest bidder to decide where he was going to take his talents (Source: http://www.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/feed/2010-11/cam-newton-probe/story/chizik-auburn-ad-defend-cameron-newton-amid-allegations), Newton was a walking rap sheet highlight reel. Yet he DID win the Heisman. And today? A successful NFL quarterback with a Gatorade endorsement. Look at what being a SEC media darling can do for you no matter WHAT crimes you commit!
How quickly our convenient memories have also forgotten about the SEC’s great Johnny “Football” Manziel? This guy wasn’t simply reported on twitter for saying curse words in public. He has had actual PICTURES floating around the internet of most of HIS transgressions! Numerous off-campus drinking binges… a barroom brawl arrest (complete with a shirtless mug shot)… oversleeping the prestigious Manning football camp due to a drunken bender from the night before that was chronicled in photos all over the internet… ONE HALF game suspension for NCAA rules violation of selling his autograph as a student… chugging beer on live TV waiting to be drafted by the NFL… a marijuana possession arrest… flipping off the opposing sideline during an NFL preseason game WHILE he is playing in it. Yes sir, this young man for certain looks like the poster boy of good behavior. Why can’t Jameis Winston be more like THAT? Good thing that despite it all, the media still adores him. After all, Snickers certainly does, as he now has their endorsement.

Meanwhile, I think its fair to say if Jameis Winston so much as passes gas in public at this point, the NCAA is likely to make FSU vacate some wins.
What is truly interesting about all this is probably how much of an impact the media assault on Winston last week actually WORKED! FSU’s administration passed down a half game suspension for Winston cursing in public. Honestly, it was appropriate to suspend him, less because of the actual crime and more because the kid needs to stop thinking he can get away with everything Manziel did and rather needs to start holding himself to a higher standard. However, the media onslaught was so intense that the FSU upper brass caved in to the pressure from all the rumors and innuendo being peddled on TV and radio, following up with an extension of the suspension to a FULL GAME on Friday evening. The late night decision even had some speculating that there was “new information.” What folks would soon learn is that there wasn’t and didn’t need to be new information; the media had done their job and done it well enough to make the University think the transgression was worse than it sounded. Perhaps maybe the media didn’t do it as well as THEY would have liked though, because FSU won the game. And the media has been furious about it ever since. Their latest anger? That Winston had pads on while helping the team warm up BEFORE the game. No folks, we aren’t kidding. This is seriously how egregiously ridiculous this media-powered witch hunt has become.
To illustrate how powerful the media is in a case like this, let’s look at how the story broke last week. FSU students tweeted out what happened. Immediately the sharks in the media water pounced, contacting these students to get all the dirt. Then the media outlets released their stories. And the chest thumping outrage at ESPN and on radio shows around the nation soon after began! However as these poor eyewitness students were being thrown under the bus by the media, and outcast by some of their football crazy peers at FSU for their tweets, a funny thing was happening. The media was MAKING UP THEIR OWN DETAILS of the story and NOT telling the whole truth! And as you can see below, an original student eyewitness became just another a victim of the anti-Winston media propaganda machine…

Interesting that a tiny blog site like ours knows more than over 90% of the media about this story, particularly the incorrect accusation that Winston “jumped up on a table” to yell his obscenities to the world as opposed to just happening to stumble upon a busy corridor while jesting with his pals. How did everyone miss this part of the story? Could it just be because all sports journalists are lazy hacks, or could it be that they NEEDED to make a bigger story out of this to achieve an end result? We need not look any further than last year’s false rape accusations against Winston and the media lies and omissions about THAT case to answer that question. (Source: http://secexposed.wordpress.com/2014/04/16/new-york-times-muck-rakes-fsu-as-media-takes-first-swipe-at-sec-threats/)
If FSU and their coaching staff can learn anything from this incident, it is that they need to keep their QB hidden and away from public interaction whatsoever until his time at FSU is complete. Jameis Winston, meanwhile, just needs a better group of friends. Folks that won’t “dare” him to say or do funny things, friends who will remind him when he is going a bit too far. He needs a good mentor… someone who can help him process what is truly right and wrong to do when you are in the public eye 24 hours a day. Jameis Winston is public enemy number 1 to ESPN and every SEC-obsessed media hack out there. They won’t rest until this kid goes down. Jameis needs to understand this and let it motivate him. More importantly, Jameis needs to begin taking notes about all the slander and libel going on around him and start planning legal action. The media sharks are going too far and they are threatening what could be a very exciting NFL career for this kid, making this a very reasonable defamation of character claim to be filed against everyone who has spoken or printed lies, lit up the airwaves with racial rants by attacking his African American vernacular, or spent hours on end insinuating he is a criminal or unintelligent.
Unfortunately for FSU, while this incident may have come to a close for them, the attacks on the program will not end until the Seminoles are out of the picture and out of the SEC’s way. That means when the media barrage fails, the NCAA will be the next jumping onto them to help finish the job. We’ve seen the pattern before against USC and Ohio State. When non-SEC teams get too big, the NCAA intervenes to adjust the playing field. Prepare for that next, FSU fans. We assure you, it will come.
We would also caution Oklahoma and Oregon to be on high alert as well. These SEC-driven sports media hitmen are gunning to seek and destroy the credibility of anyone standing in the way of their favorite conference to get full control of this four team playoff. That is why they have been so thick with their propaganda to show why the SEC is such a better conference, so that the committee will feel forced to ramrod two if not three SEC teams into that final four. (Source: http://secexposed.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/propaganda-parades-poll-collusion-and-playoff-committee-manipulation/)
The SEC came really close to eliminating one of their biggest “villains” after this most recent coordinated media attack last week. Too bad for them that they came up just short of accomplishing their goals. Rest assured folks, they aren’t done trying. Isn’t that right, Paul Finebaum?
You still mad, bro?"