Thug Factory: Another Florida State Football Player Accused of Beating Woman

In what is beginning to become a familiar pattern another Florida State Seminole football player has run afoul of the law for punching a woman out. This comes just days after the announcement that the school had cut ties with freshman quarterback De’Andre Johnson after a video of him punching a woman in the head at a bar went viral. The school has indefinitely suspended star running back Dalvin Cook and authorities are issuing a warrant for his arrest.

The latest garnet and gold clad thug was expected to play a huge role for the team this year as it tries to offset the loss of superstar quarterback and accused rapist Jameis Winston who has now taken his act south to Tampa Bay and NFL millions. Cook is also accused of beating up a woman – this one took place outside of a bar – and could end up being benched by a university that is now faced with trying to salvage it's image as being a thug factory.

As being reported by ESPN in the story “Dalvin Cook facing battery charge, indefinitely suspended by Florida St.”:

The state attorney's office in Tallahassee will issue a warrant for the arrest of Florida State running back Dalvin Cook, who is accused of punching a 21-year-old woman in the face several times during an argument outside a bar last month.

Florida State issued a statement Friday afternoon saying Cook has been suspended from the program indefinitely. The university said it would have no other comment.

State attorney Willie Meggs told ESPN.com on Friday that he had met with the woman, who is not a Florida State student, and a female witness on Friday. Cook's accuser presented Meggs photos of her injuries.

Meggs said Cook, a 19-year-old sophomore from Miami, will be charged with misdemeanor battery.

"I found the women to be very credible," Meggs said.

The alleged incident occurred the night before former Seminoles quarterback De'Andre Johnson punched another woman at a different bar near the FSU campus on June 24. Seminoles coach Jimbo Fisher dismissed Johnson from the team on Monday night, hours after the state attorney's office released surveillance video showing Johnson punching a 21-year-old FSU student in the face.

The woman who said Cook punched her told ESPN.com that her bottom lip was split and her nose was sore the next day. The woman said she identified Cook as the man who struck her in a photo lineup with two Tallahassee Police Department investigators on July 1. She told police she wanted to pursue criminal charges against him.

The Cook incident makes it obvious that the football team is a festering nest of criminal conduct and with the latest in a string of ugly public relations scandals the football program itself should be placed under scrutiny by the NCAA. There is an obvious disciplinary problem on the team and an institution that is obviously being overly permissive in sacrificing decency for dollars needs to look into some serious housecleaning.

As the old Greek proverb so aptly states “a fish rots from the head down” and that head belongs to FSU head coach Jimbo Fisher. Somebody, anybody who is an influential booster or has some power within the college hierarchy needs to call Fisher on the carpet because at some point winning and the big television bucks need to be secondary to developing decent citizens instead of gangstas.

Oh Chief Osceola, say it ain’t so!

Air Scumbag: Nike Signs Thug Jameis Winston to Endorsement Deal

The merchandising gold rush is on as corporations are set to begin harvesting the next crop of potential superstars prior to the upcoming NFL draft. Big sports names can bring mega profits, especially if they end up having success at the professional level and let’s face it, the NFL long ago ceased being primarily about football. The actual football games are just the exoskeleton that the league wraps around itself to obscure the reality that it is a ruthless business enterprise that rakes in the dough off of merchandise sales and corporate sponsorship deals. So it should come as no surprise that athletic apparel goliath Nike has signed accused sex abuser and crab leg thief “Famous Jameis” Winston to an endorsement contract.

ESPN is reporting that “Nike signs QBs Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota”:

The world's largest shoe and apparel company confirmed to ESPN.com that it signed Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston. Sources say the company has also signed this year's Heisman Trophy winner, Marcus Mariota, and the two runners-up, Wisconsin running back Melvin Gordon, Alabama wide receiver Amari Cooper, as well as Georgia running back Todd Gurley. Terms of the deals were not disclosed.

Signing Winston certainly has its risks. On Thursday, Erica Kinsman, who accused the quarterback of sexually assaulting her in 2012, filed a civil suit against him. Winston was never criminally charged and the university ruled that there wasn't enough evidence to say that Winston was in violation of the school's conduct code. Winston's attorney denied the accusations again after the suit was filed.

Ironic that Nike jettisoned star Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson as a spokesman last year out of concern over his child abuse charges but is down with inking a dude who was able to beat the system on a rape charge.  Winston, who is a lock to become the number one pick in the draft – thanks to the woefully tone deaf Tampa Bay Buccaneers organization – will be a hot commodity until he inevitably gets into trouble with the law. The millions of dollars about to be showered upon the troubled young man will buy a lot of gold chains and other bling, a convoy of vehicles to load his homeys into for the trip to Tampa and lap dances galore at the nude bars on Dale Mabry Highway. Nike is going to cash in now while Winston’s market value is at its peak.

But once again, it’s all about the money. Nike would probably even hire a cannibalistic pederast to hawk it’s sweat-shop manufactured shoes if there was money in it. In Winston's case that famous swoosh does somewhat resemble an erect penis although marketing it as such would be a bridge too far even for Nike.

NFL Player Sues Florida Cops Over Masturbation Mixup

You have to forgive west central Florida cops for getting their game faces on with former Florida State University quarterback Jameis Winston all but certainly coming to the area very soon but they got the wrong guy this time. NFL defensive back Nate Allen who just signed a free agent deal with the Oakland Raiders is suing Fort Myers police for detaining him over allegedly choking the chicken in front of a teen aged girl. In a case of mistaken identity Allen was arrested and held back in February after police responded to reports of a black man in a black truck playing with his private parts.

As reported by the police abuse watchdog website Copblock in the story “NFL Star Nate Allen Sues Fort Myers Police Department”:

Nate Allen, formerly with the Philadelphia Eagles until free agency brought him to the Oakland Raiders this winter, was detained by police in February of this year. A 16 year old girl had called police and stated she saw a person in a black truck driving and masturbating. The police found Allen in his black truck some time after and detained him.

It turns out that Allen was not masturbating in his truck because at the time of the call he was eating dinner at Red Lobster and taking photographs with the staff. Yet, that didn’t stop the police from prematurely releasing the information and putting Allen through some public embarrassment. This wasn’t good for him, since last was the final year of his contract and players have recently lost their jobs for off field antics. Having to negotiate with teams while that potential issue hung over his head obviously was not to his advantage.

While Allen was cleared it was obviously a traumatic experience and could damage his image by causing him to be labeled as one of the thugs, drunks and domestic abusers that the NFL keeps punishing so a simple apology won’t suffice. So he has justifiably filed suit against the Ft. Myers police department.

Despite what is an embarrassing kerfuffle over the Nate Allen ordeal, all police departments within a 150 mile radius of Tampa should be on high alert. The putrid Tampa Buccaneers have the first pick in the NFL draft and are a virtual lock to draft the crab leg stealing, accused rapist Winston who will be rolling down I-75 with millions of dollars and a caravan of his homeys. The famous all nude strip joints on Dale Mabry Highway are likely salivating over the record business around training camp time. So likely are the cops to whom bagging the kingfish from Tallahassee when he inevitably breaks bad will deliver a coveted trophy to be mounted on their precinct wall.

Woman Beating Sports Thug Ray Rice Wins NFL Appeal Case

It is a lamentable fact of modern American society that professional sports figures are elevated to role models with youth. This is especially so with the evolution of major sports leagues into global marketing colossuses whose merchandising money dwarfs that of revenue generated by the actual“games”.  Professional athletes have been embraced as idols going back to the pre-television era and the likes of Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe and others so living vicariously through them is not a new phenomenon by any stretch of the imagination. Sports however do mirror society and the times in which we live so the dismal character of many pro players are a given. Look at O.J. Simpson aka "the Juice". Was there ever an example of such a turnabout for a transcendent celebrity athlete who was adored and revered until he butchered his wife and got away with it?

2014 has been chock full of examples of fallen stars and one that has drawn more than his share of national media attention is former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice. Rice drew cries of outrage after the release of a security camera video showing him brutally knocking out his then fiancee Janay Palmer in a hotel elevator. The NFL, which has invested a ton of marketing dough into appealing to women – as evidenced by their cynical, pink-festooned annual exploitation of breast cancer – so such an act of domestic violence was a public relations nightmare. The overbearing ass that is NFL commissioner Roger Goodell immediately flew into action to apply the necessary damage control and dropped the hammer on the woman beating thug Rice.

Rice was quickly dumped by the Ravens and  became a pariah to the extent that he was removed from the mega-popular Madden 2015 video game. Additional incidents involving domestic violence followed the Rice video and included Minnesota Vikings star Adrian Peterson as well as Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy, both of whom were dealt with harshly by the league.  Rice’s fall from grace going from the starting running back of the 2012 Super Bowl champs to a reviled and despised figure wasn’t of Orenthal like proportions but sent shockwaves through the sporting world nonetheless.

Well Ray Rice, domestic abuser, spouse pounder and high profile thug is about to get another chance because he just won his appeal and is eligible for reinstatement. According to a Reuters story, “Former Ravens running back Ray Rice wins appeal, is eligible for NFL”:

Former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice has won an appeal of his indefinite suspension for domestic violence and is now eligible to sign with any National Football League team, the league said on Friday.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Rice, 27, in July for two games for punching his then-fiancee Janay Palmer unconscious during an altercation at an Atlantic City, New Jersey, casino in February.

But after elevator security video surfaced in September of Rice's one-punch knockout, the Baltimore Ravens released the three-time Pro Bowler, and his $35 million contract, and the NFL suspended him indefinitely.

The hearing officer in the appeal this month concluded that Rice did not mislead Goodell when he disciplined Rice the first time and therefore the commissioner acted arbitrarily in imposing a second, harsher punishment based on the same incident and known facts.

"I do not doubt that viewing the video in September evoked horror in commissioner Goodell as it did with the public. But this does not change the fact that Rice did not lie or mislead the NFL at the June 16 meeting," former U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Jones said.

Rice said in a statement on Friday that he made "an inexcusable mistake." He said he accepts responsibility and will work to improve himself as a husband while giving back to the community.

With the playoffs rapidly approaching and a high number of running backs having been injured this year it is a near certainty that some team will sign Rice soon. It will not be the Baltimore Ravens though considering the mass public exorcism that culminated in an official team sponsored "Ray Rice jersey exchange" , but when the stakes are high and there is money to be made morality and principle go out the window. That is just the way we roll in America these days in a bizarre land of collapsing values, greed and terminal dumbness where celebrity is by far the most valuable coin of the realm.

Provided that Rice can keep his wife-beating in house and away from those prying security cameras he may even become a role model again with a whole new line of new team apparel on the shelves just in time for Christmas.

NFL Moral Beacon Tony Dungy is a Hypocritical Anti-Gay Bigot

Former NFL player, head coach and current television football analyst Tony Dungy has found himself in a bit of a pickle over comments that he made regarding St. Louis Rams rookie defensive lineman Michael Sam who is gay. Dungy, a man who wears his religion on his sleeve came under fire for his statement that were he still an NFL head coach that he would not have drafted Sam, a former University of Missouri All American who came out as being gay back in February prior to May's draft where he was taken in the seventh and last round by the Rams. Dungy, who rocketed to national fame as the coach who managed to do the unthinkable and turn around the perpetually putrid Tampa Bay Buccaneers into a winning team and who later won a Super Bowl with the Indianapolis Colts before ending up on network sports television slipped up like so many other pious bigots and let his true feelings get out.

In an story published in the Tampa Tribune - a town where Dungy is still treated like the coming of the messiah he was quoted as I excerpt:

"I wouldn't have taken him,'' said former Bucs and Colts coach Tony Dungy, now an analyst for NBC. "Not because I don't believe Michael Sam should have a chance to play, but I wouldn't want to deal with all of it."It's not going to be totally smooth " things will happen.''

Despite being placed on a media created pedestal as though he was some exalted moral authority Dungy must have been stunned at the backlash to his ill-advised comments and immediately threw the Rapture bus into reverse, leaving smoking rubber in his wake.

Dungy's "clarification" only further illustrates the hypocrisy of the man, one which is rampant among the most vocal adherents of the bastardized bible of chicken-fried, militarized American Christianity where the it was the money changers who ran Jesus's long-haired hippie ass out of the temple and stole his words for their blasphemous prosperity gospel. According to an ESPN story what the canonized Dungy really meant was:

"I do not believe Michael's sexual orientation will be a distraction to his teammates or his organization. I do, however, believe that the media attention that comes with it will be a distraction."

Which is total horseshit because when the Tim Tebow traveling salvation show was a hit a few years back with the "distraction" nearly tearing apart the Denver Broncos to the point where the former Florida Gator and religious icon who some - and I kid you not -were comparing to the earthly resurrection of Christ, it was Dungy who was one of Tebow's most steadfast advocates although the man couldn't accurately throw a football into the ocean eight out of ten times if he was standing knee deep in the surf. So much for the "distraction" hogwash, it was a brief moment when a charlatan was revealed for all to see. This isn't the first time that Dungy has found himself in trouble for anti-gay sentiments, in 2007 he endorsed a same-sex marriage ban backed by one of those all too prevalent so-called Christian hate groups called the Indiana Family Institute.

You know, the real Jesus hated hypocrites, probably as much as Dungy and his ilk hate gays although unlike the more honest members of the flock the former coach and television celebrity hides it very well. Jesus had not one word to say about homosexuality and for all that is known may have even been gay himself being that he only hung around with a pack of dudes and according the immutable word of God in the bible never consorted with a member of the opposite sex. The purveyors of the same snake oil that Jesus warned about - that of the pharisees and false-prophets are cunning in being able to cloak their savage, very un-Christlike hatred in the cloak of scripture that they have bastardized to reinforce their own narrow-minded intolerance.

Keith Olbermann may have been run out of MSNBC where he had a good run of trashing hypocrites and liars during the Bush-Cheney years, ceding the stage to sleazy Obama apologists like Rachel Maddow but he roasted the man that the media has spent years selling as being able to walk on water as just another one of the liars and swine who have helped to piss on everything that this once great country at one time - at least in theory - stood for. Here is a small part of Olbermann's already classic skewering of Dungy:

"I wouldn't want to deal with it, things will happen,' is remarkably similar to what football coaches and owners said until 1946 about players who looked like Tony Dungy. And it's remarkably similar to what NFL owners said until 1989 about guys who wanted to become NFL head coaches who look like Tony Dungy."

So Tony Dungy is a fake and a sanctimonious horse's ass as well. He was always a fraud in Tampa Bay where despite a defense stocked with future hall of fame players like Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks and John Lynch his teams could never get over the hump due to his stubborn refusal to accept what all but the willfully blind could see - that his quarterbacks stank. Dungy was run out of town after a crushing playoff humiliation by the Philadelphia Eagles in which with his job on the line, the team quit on him. He also only managed to win but one Super Bowl during his seven year stint as head coach of the Indianapolis Colts with record-shattering Peyton Manning in his prime. The performance of Manning (who just can't shake the choker label) during the butt-ugly 43-8 stomping of the "scared" Denver Broncos by the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl takes a bit of the taint off of Dungy's legacy but the fact is that he consistently underachieved as a coach and owes his national prominence largely to media hype.

Don't count on him falling from grace too much over his remarks about Michael Sam, the public relations and damage control teams are already frantically working to polish his halo. As for the general hypocrisy of the new breed of American Christianity that has risen to dominance by largely purging liberal voices from the flock - I learned at a young age the extent to which those practicing it were fakes and easily duped good folks whose trust and goodwill were exploited by con artists and political opportunists.

Back in the 1970's one of our local Baptist churches used to troll the neighborhood looking for potential converts to be the subjects of their brainwashing sessions or as it was formally known "Sunday School". Once the pickup lists had been drawn up the gaily colored church bus would be sent out to pick up the hapless and impressionable victims. My poor sister and I were like many other children conscripted out of our parents desire for peace and quiet and maybe some coveted whoopee time.

The cheery old lady who was in charge of the festivities while we were on the bus would lead us in chants and song of a a 'biblical' nature and I will never forget the day when the song happened to be one of those silly-assed rhymes that are so adored by the Christian Right. We sang - "you can't get to heaven with roller skates, because you'll roll right past those pearly gates", a verse or two later it became "you can't get to Heaven with hippie hair because the lord don't like that mess up there". I didn't sing but only looked on in a youthful recognition of the hypocrisy that in my now middle-aged years would come to be so dominant in the USA!, USA! USA!.

While she was singing this, banging on a tambourine for cadence, she was standing in front of a mural of a man with a scraggly beard and hair that rolled way down past his shoulders, maybe even to his buttocks..and it sure as fuck wasn't Ted Nugent.

If the Red Sox Had Lost Would the Terrorists Have Won?

Kiss the Street, Kiss the Whip

A bit of food for thought with this segue into the world of sports where it intersects with politics in the aftermath of the Boston Red Sox World Series win last Wednesday night. The Beantown boppers had made no secret of their adoption of the “Boston Strong” motto after the heinously cruel pressure cooker bombing of the Boston Marathon finish line back in April by those evil little bastards the  Tsarnaev brothers. While the use by the baseball team of the tragedy as a motivating factor in their championship run was at the very least poor judgment and at worst poor taste and any criticism of such is a taboo so serious that it would merit a serious bludgeoning if invoked in the company of many Bostonians. The Red Sox played it off as though their season was a tribute rather than the co-opting of the victims of that gutless attack that left the street soaked with blood and dismembered limbs and altered the lives of hundreds but am I the only one who finds it all to be cynical?

By taking the city on their shoulders so to speak and providing an example of perseverance in their relentless crusade towards the October hardware did it not ever occur that such a mission could have gone badly awry? What would have happened had the St. Louis Cardinals managed to actually show up and what if the vanquished had instead been the victors? If the Cardinals had won the World Series and they were certainly a team that has had the luck of the devil himself in the postseason in recent years, would that have meant that the terrorists had won too?

Sports teams love gimmicks and the 2013 Red Sox are just the latest example despite outside of the serious political implications. In addition to the motivational ploy of using the bombing as fuel for fire a good number the members of the team for some bizarre reason also decided to collectively abandon shaving, growing beards that in a rather strange bit of irony made them appear much like the Islamist radicals that were the perpetrators. You could barely distinguish the difference between Johnny Gomes and Osama bin Laden, Mike Napoli and a Taliban commander by the time that the playoffs began. The hometown team also trotted out bombing survivors (given that there were only 3 deaths there was no short supply of them) for an onfield ceremony during game two, a contest that the Sox actually lost and were headed to the pitcher friendly Busch Stadium for the next three games. Seriously, if the Cards didn’t manage to completely implode, especially their pitching staff there would have been no victory parade in Boston and no propagandistic milking of the bombing tragedy with the pilgrimage to the site of the crime on the route. The Red Sox organization certainly would not have discouraged any of it, after all it was a member of the ownership group who allowed the CIA to use a private plane for extraordinary renditions aka torture during the Bush years.

In the immediate aftermath of the 6-1 finale revelers filled the streets of the city that became the testing ground only six months ago for a rollout of martial law in America. There were no paramilitary police goon squads patrolling the streets in armored vehicles and engaging in warrantless searches of the homes of cowardly citizens to chase down one teenage punk and the air was filled with triumph. There were many reports of fans (likely drunk if I know Boston at all) making pilgrimages to the marathon finish line and actually kissing the freaking street. It was a pure mob atmosphere and I would hope that any Muslim with a lick of common sense and an interest in self-preservation would have stayed inside, God only knows what the packs of celebrants roaming the streets were capable of. This satirical bit from The Onion entitled "Red Sox Fan Dedicates Garbage Can He’s Lighting On Fire To Marathon Victims" would be a hoot were it not so absurd as to resemble an actual feat by an overly stimulated fan. This all really should be a part of a larger conversation of the misplaced value system of this rotting empire where so many choose to live vicariously through the exploits of their sports teams. Let us not kid ourselves either, while the Red Sox adoption of the cause in taking it upon themselves of cleansing the city of shame and horror is hardly the worst exploitation of political memes to promote an imperialist warfare agenda. Just watch any NFL game with the militaristic jingoism, even worse around Veterans Day weekend games and the honor guard and military flyovers. As a departed associate of mine once mused - the reason that the NHL has never been able to reach the level of popularity in this country is because the games are all indoors and the fans unable to see the millions of taxpayer dollars squandered by directing six or so fighter jets to fly overhead for something as silly as a sporting event. But that again is part of a much larger topic that is for another time.

As for the Boston Red Sox, if you are going to claim credit as exorcists for a city’s emotional traumas then it is a legitimate question of what lasting damage would have resulted in the psyches of many of the locals had they not won. David Ortiz was a monster in the series, the idiocy of the Cardinals coaching staff to pitch to this guy rather than walk him was arrogance at its worst. Ortiz did the equivalent of brutally smashing in the skull of the living bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, lamented Rolling Stone cover boy with his bat. But what if he didn’t? What if the clueless Cardinals didn’t lob hittable pitch after hittable pitch to the eventual MVP?  This is where the social problem lies with multimillionaire professional athletes exploiting political causes. In this case of the Red Sox using the unconscionable maiming and killing of civilians as a rallying cry I will assume that it was an honest rather than just slimily glomming onto an event to provide that extra motivation that cashing seven figure pay checks just does not provide to a celebrity ballplayer.

This is not to trash the Red Sox, piss on their victory parade or drag their trophy through shit. They have tainted it themselves through their use of the bombings for maximum motivational effect.  They were a resilient, scrappy, clutch bunch that in no way resembled the smoking crater left at the heart of Red Sox nation after the Bobby Valentine disaster. They earned the title and beat the crap out of all who stood in their way, they were one hell of a baseball team but sports is a non-partisan, non-political exercise in escapism and entertainment. Professional athletes should just shut the hell up and play.