Star college footballer Dalvin Cook might as well stay home now, because, as with his fellow abusive teammate DeAndre Johnson, he won’t be playing for Florida State anymore.
Like fired quarterback Johnson, the 19-year-old running back is also accused of literally “painting the town red” by physically attacking young females. In this case, though, not because the subject was “aggressive” after being shoved and insulted at a bar, but because she rejected a teammate’s sexual advances.
This second known assault by a Florida State football player in fact occurred the night before QB Johnson went ballistic on his 20-something victim, although it happened at a different club and the woman in question wasn’t an FSU student.
According to her criminal complaint and supporting testimony by someone who witnessed the attack, suspect Dalvin Cook tried to muscle her into accepting a date with an unnamed player she had just moments before turned down.
When Cook’s bullying failed to change the young lady’s mind, he then sucker-punched the 21-year-old several times head on, bruising her nose and splitting open her bottom lip.
"I found the women to be very credible," said Florida’s state attorney general, who announced he was issuing a warrant for Cook’s arrest on misdemeanor battery charges at about the same time the Seminoles were declaring they had dismissed the accused athlete “indefinitely.”
These two assaults by college-level footballers follow at least a year’s worth of similar revelations about a number of their professional counterparts who have likewise racked up quite a few incidences of violence against women, with little or no consequence.
It’s a laissez-faire attitude toward such unsportsmanlike conduct that seems to be sending a very clear and dangerous message now, all the way down the ranks.
