This is not the kind of story I tend to follow (sports are supposed to be an escape from reality), so I don’t know all of the details/speculation. That being the case, can someone explain to me why Glenn Winston is still on the MSU football team? And I’m not going to buy the “innocent until proven guilty” line, since the other guy (a walk-on) has already been kicked off the team.
In a Dec. 13 interview with The Detroit News, Roland Martin, an MSU senior offensive lineman, said Winston was receiving more reps in practice than in some regular-season practices and could be a surprise contributor in the bowl game.
A police report indicates that Sturges, who lives in the Center Street home, went downstairs after hearing a disturbance and was punched in the head, forcing him to be hospitalized with what Hurley said was a fractured skull and bleeding of the brain.
This happened in the private residence of one of our own hockey players, for crying out loud.
Talented or not, if he did it he needs to be relieved of his scholarship and uniform.
I was thinking the same thing when I read the press release this morning. Why was the walk-on kicked off the team and not Winston. As much as I like Dantonio, I question some of his decisions lately.
I can only hope it’s because the other football player was the one who started the problem and Winston stepped in after that and went too far in “defending” a team mate.
I don’t know. I have confidence that Dantonio is doing the right thing.
[...] in the story OL Roland Martin suggests that Winston could be a contributor in the Capital One Bowl. I’ll echo KJ’s observation that this seems, on the surface, to be a serious offense and not the type likely to get you [...]
It would make some sense to have had the staff take Winston’s word. I don’t know if he has had other issues, but if hasn’t, he would have been more credible. Remember that the investigation has taken a couple of months now, with interviews and re-interviews of the involved and witnesses. So perhaps this means it wasn’t cut-and-dry to the police either.
I’m hoping there is a lot more to this, otherwise this would be very strange not to have had Winston suspended from the team this entire time — at least.
Does anyone know how this incident has been seen from the hockey team’s perspective?
I hope there is something that exhonerates Winston as the instigator or involved in injuring the hockey player – maybe he stepped in as peace-maker? Otherwise he should have been suspended from the team. I can’t believe that fracturing someone’s skull and causing bleeding of the brain is only a misdemeanor. I would have thought inflicting that level of bodily harm would be a felony, not that I’m a legal expert by any means.
Dunnings is charging Winston with hitting Sturges. In which case he needs to go. But, as Rexrode, notes there are some conflicting reports here.
http://noise.typepad.com/hey_joe/2008/12/legal-update.html
I guess you have to give the coaching staff the benefit of the doubt for now. But this smells bad.
In the past, Dantonio has given some unofficial punishments (see SirDarean Adams, Jeremy Ware and T.J. Williams who were charged with assault and unarmed robbery last year) earlier when guys got in trouble and then done nothing when they were actually charged. The majority of those charges were later dropped.
Winston’s charged with three misdeamenors. That’ll most likely be pleaded down to something lesser or fewer.
I don’t see why being convicted of a misdemeanor means you automatically get kicked off the team. From Rexrode’s update, the prosecutor says that basically a bunch of people were fighting and he only had evidence to charge Winston and White. By charging him with misdemeanor assault, Dunnings is saying he doesn’t think he can prove there was intent to cause serious injury (that’s a felony, if they can prove you tried to cause me great bodily harm).
A bunch of people got into a fight and it was just bad luck that someone got severely hurt. I don’t see how it’s even possible to punch someone and fracture their skull, given that hands usually break before skulls. I’d assume he got seriously damaged by falling down. That happened to a guy I knew at state, who got in a fight with a fellow stupid frat boy and got knocked down and hit his head on Ann Street.
This doesn’t seem like such a serious incident to me and I’d question whether Dunnings would have bothered trying to investigate it if a bunch of athletes weren’t involved.
So far I’m with witless on this one. We’ll see how it keeps shaking out. I’ve read Rexrode’s and freep’s notes on this, and it’s still confusing. Getting in a fight is not an automatic expel, but definitely an automatic suspension. If there is more, then more is warranted for sure. My opinion is the team’s standard should be stronger than the law’s, but I don’t think from what we know yet if we can tell that Dantonio has been more or less lenient than the law at this point (though it also seems that 3 games was on the lean side for any type of involvement in a fight).
I’m going to guess the skull cracking was a result of a fall after a hit too. When I was at State, a guy died on MAC Ave outside the old BW3′s from hitting his head against the pavement after getting punched. Same sort of thing just happened in two different cases of youth fights recently here where I live. It’s surprising how often that can happen. Really really horrible for Sturges.
Pretty happy to here no Winston in the team travel list…