On April 30, 2015, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers made the first overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft by picking Jameis Winston, Florida State’s star quarterback, known  for his superb running and passing abilities. Winston has skills that NFL teams would die for, yet ESPN Senior Analyst Ian O’Connor still calls him “the biggest gamble in modern draft history”.
Winston is hailed as a star, and earned infinite respect and popularity on the Florida State campus as a result. Yet Winston has been charged with numerous crimes, including shooting squirrels with a pellet gun on school grounds, for which he was released immediately, engaging in a “pellet gun battle” in his apartment building that same night, causing $4,000 in damage that FSU athletics payed in full in exchange for the apartment owners agreeing to not press charges, stealing soda from a local Burger King, despite being told not to by an employee, stealing over $30 worth of crab legs from a supermarket, for which he claimed to have “forgotten to pay for”, and received community service hours, and a short suspension from the FSU baseball team, and jumping on a table in a crowded restaurant and yelling a sexually explicit phrase, for which Winston also received minimal punishment. Yet, that is hardly the beginning of Winston’s criminal accusations.
On December 7, 2012, Winston was accused of raping fellow Florida State student Erica Klinsman in his off campus apartment. Klinsman reported the assault to Tallahassee police that same night, and recognized Winston as the attacker after seeing him in class five weeks later. In response,Tallahassee police dropped the investigation, claiming Klinsman refused to cooperate with the police. The case was reopened nine months later, when the attending judge concluded that there was not enough evidence to convict Winston of rape. Winston’s lawyer argued that the encounter was consensual Only after the U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation of the university’s handling of the incident, did Florida State conduct a half hearted investigation of Winston under student code of conduct, over one and a half years after the alleged attack.
In May, 2014, the school held a code of conduct hearing, where two of Winston’s teammates,, Chris Casher and Ronald Darby, testified, saying they witnessed  portion of the sexual abuse between Winston and Klinsman.  In response, the school accused Casher and Darby of violating school rules, and did nothing to punish their star quarterback, who was not even present for the hearing.
After the accusations, Klinsman, the victim, was pressured out of Tallahassee, practically driven out by supporters of the football team. For a while, the college football world turned its back on Winston’s criminal activities, distracted by his spectacular play on the field. Winston would go on to be drafted first overall, and promised a $7 million signing bonus. All charges have been dropped, proving the idea that athletes are held to different standards. To be fair, Winston is not the only athlete to be put in such a situation. when a video of Ray Rice beating his wife in an elevator surfaced, Rice was punished with nothing more than a suspension. Fellow NFL running back Adrian Peterson was also charged with domestic abuse, and received no criminal  punishment as well. Professional and college athletes are held to entirely different standards than what the law states is fair. Is it fair that Winston is playing professional football instead of serving jail time? Is it fair that Erica Klinsman is a disgrace to Florida State? No. When the NCAA, and local police decide to punish student athletes for their crimes as any other citizen would be punished, it will be fair, but until then, athletes will continue to do whatever they please, whether it complies with the law or not, because in the world we live in today, the law does not apply to them. As of today, athletes are the exceptions to the rules, and there is no greater example than Jameis Winston.