It’s been two years now since Jameis Winston left the great Florida State University and moved on to bigger and better things. He now plays in the National Football League for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. While it’s been quite a while and a couple football seasons since we’ve had to part with one of the best football players our school has seen, it seems like he never left. While he’s been off our campus, he can’t seem to stay out of the headlines.
During his time at Florida State, Winston was infamous for making front-page news, whether it was for shouting profanity in school courtyards or being accused of sexual assault. It seems that this bad habit has followed him to his professional career, as he recently made headlines again for a “poor choice in words.” This past week, Winston was visiting an elementary school in St. Petersburg, Fla. to motivate a class of fifth grade students. Upon noticing that one of the male students was disengaged and looking a bit bored, Winston attempted to get the audience to interact without singling the one boy out. To do so, he had all the boys to stand up and asked them a series of questions, making them shout back the answers to him.
While encouraging the boys to be more confident in what they were saying he told them that boys aren’t meant to be soft-spoken and one day they would grow up to have deep, strong voices. While going on this rant, he mentioned that women are supposed to be “silent, polite, gentle” as opposed to men who are supposed to be strong.
Unfortunately, for Mr. Winston, the room was filled with media—some of who were recording the entire speech. It’s clear in the videos that Winston was rambling in his speech and certainly did not intend to belittle anyone or make such comments. In a statement to the press, he expressed that he, “used a poor word choice that may have overshadowed [his] positive message for some.”
Considering his past, it’s reasonable that Winston would be under fire for making such comments. However, it truly seems that he innocently used the wrong choice of words in this case. Despite this one hitch, his speech otherwise seemed to be very genuine and enthusiastic and he seemed to sincerely want to motivate and encourage this classroom of young children. While he may have a rough past, it seems that Jameis Winston is honestly trying to use his platform to make a positive impact in his community.