COMMENTARY

Winston’s behavior hurting draft stock

Jameis Winston, whose troubled saga ranges from the serious to the silly, should be intently watching the NFL Draft this week.

Invariably, some highly-rated star will drop like a stone, causing Mel Kiper’s hair to combust.

Infamous Jameis, this is your life. Or at least your bad dream.

Maybe Winston will realize that his behavior could be costing him big money as a professional - enough to actually buy all the crab legs he can eat.

Shortly after Winston’s latest incident - he stole food from Publix - various NFL execs and scouts were quoted anonymously as saying the Florida State quarterback was hurting his 2015 draft stock.

The main theme from them all: Jameis can’t be trusted right now.

If he continues to play like a reigning Heisman Trophy winner this season and starts carrying himself like a reigning Heisman Trophy winner … he could be the No. 1 pick if he decides to leave FSU early.

Or he can keep making bad decisions and create such a toxic blowback that he’ll make some NFL clubs nervous and give others the feeling he’s radioactive.

Teams may well love his talent, but risking millions on a problem child at the NFL’s most important position gives them pause.

Do you think the worst team in the league can afford to gamble the top overall selection on a knucklehead?

Let’s say Winston has a good, but not great, 2014 season with the Seminoles. He’ll need all that time to show he’s reconstructed his character. Any more off-field incidents could send him plummeting in the draft.

Winston can’t look at Johnny Manziel and think he’ll emerge from the mud all neat and clean, too.

Manziel apparently will be a top 10 pick on Thursday. He has escaped the autograph-selling controversy and other more benign antics to emerge as the face of the draft, but Johnny Football was never embroiled in a sexual assault case, either.

So what Jameis has to know is this: He’s out of mulligans.

He’s used his free passes.

He’s bagged his limit.

Winston can’t issue any more carefully crafted statements like he did after the crab-legs caper, about having “a moment of youthful ignorance” or praying that “friends and family will view me as the 20-year old young man that I am.”

No, he’s fresh out of downs and do-overs.

Manziel acted like a professional in college and got away with it. Winston is on the same path.

He didn’t walk out of that Publix with baloney or ground beef, did he? No, some campus stars have champagne tastes, with entitlement as their currency. Winston couldn’t show up at his place with a box of Ramen noodles for dinner.

The only pattern Winston should be concerned about is the one he’s running.

That’s why he should never have been reinstated to the FSU baseball team after stealing from Publix. He finally needed to be shown that he’s being held to a higher standard - a Heisman standard.

The Jameis Circus and the Seminoles will be in the area when they face Stetson University today in DeLand, Fla. (Coincidentally, the Hollis Center, the student recreation center on the Stetson campus, is funded by the Hollis family, including the late Mark Hollis. Winston might be interested in knowing that Hollis worked for Publix for nearly 60 years, rising from bagger to the supermarket’s president.)

Seminoles football Coach Jimbo Fisher should have insisted that Winston, a relief pitcher, be finished for the season. Fisher also should have already announced that Winston has been suspended from the defending national champion’s Aug. 30 opener against Oklahoma State for shoplifting and defaming FSU and the Heisman Trophy.

Instead, Fisher hid behind baseball coach Mike Martin’s decision to suspend Winston while he served 20 hours of community service.

Winston bounded into the Seminoles’ dugout on Sunday immediately after completing his community service in, ahem, record time. According to the Tallahassee Democrat, his service included working at a YMCA. That’ll teach him.

The NFL’s lesson might prove costlier.

Sports, Pages 18 on 05/06/2014

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