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What does BCS have in common with Darrell Williams case?
Published: 8/22/2012 10:30 AM
Last Modified: 8/22/2012 10:30 AM

Winding the calendar back to December, I wrote that my problem with the BCS is it’s a “guess” system.

In December of 2011, voters assumed LSU and Alabama were better than Oklahoma State. But they didn’t really know. So they guessed and put the SEC squads in the title game. Right or wrong, it was still a guess.

In 2010, voters suspected Auburn and Oregon were better than TCU, which capped an unbeaten season with a Rose Bowl victory over Wisconson. But they didn’t really know if the big-league squads could jump higher than the Frogs. How could they? So they guessed and invited Auburn and Oregon to the title game.

I could keep doing this, year-by-year, but instead of boring you with details I'll mention only one more example. USC and Oklahoma got voted into the title game after the 2004 season and unbeaten Auburn didn’t get to play for championship stakes because of a guess. Can you imagine an SEC squad being “guessed” out of the title game nowadays?

The point is we deserve something better than a “guess” system. We need a know-for-sure system and we’ll get closer to that with a four-team playoff, although we’re still guessing about which four teams deserve to be in the pool.

I said all that to say all this: I feel the same way about the BCS that I do about the Darrell Williams case.

Williams is the Oklahoma State basketball player who, on July 23, was determined by a Payne County jury to be guilty of two counts of rape by instrumentation and one count of sexual assault.

Let’s be clear about this: I have no idea of knowing whether Williams did or didn’t do what he was accused of doing by female students who took the witness stand. The girls had been invited by basketball players to attend a party at a Stillwater residence. I can’t tell you what took place at that party because I wasn’t there. Neither were the people on the jury.

I was a little shocked when I heard Williams had been found guilty because the conviction -- like the BCS -- was based on a guess. That’s not a criticism of the jury. It’s a criticism of the system.

Did Williams do it? Was it someone else? Jury members heard testimony and they gave their best guess in the form of a verdict. Would you want to serve prison time based on someone else’s guess?

In no way should this be perceived that I am defending Williams. I’ll let Jesse Jackson (he’s coming to Stillwater on Thursday) fight that battle.

And in no way am I a blind defender of student-athletes. Probably, I lean the other direction. I think student-athlete entitlement is way out of hand (media can take some blame for this) and some athletes go to parties thinking they are entitled to act however they choose because of BMOC status. I’m not saying Williams did that because that would be, of course, a guess.

Here’s what I do know. The accusers deserve justice instead of a guess. Williams deserves justice instead of a guess. But we’re going to get guesses because -- since this is not a smoking gun case -- that’s the system we’ve got.

And this is not a guess: If you are a female student and you get invited to a party by a student-athlete you don’t know, decline instead of being flattered. It won’t be the kind of party where a Scrabble game is going to break out.

And one more thing: If you are a student-athlete, help yourself by using common sense. If you’re at a party and folks are smoking weed (that detail came out in preliminary hearing testimony), extricate yourself from that environment as quickly as possible, unless you value weed over getting a free education (and, amazingly, some people have trouble choosing). Bonus preaching: Don’t make a case to me that marijuana should be legalized. We don’t need more people choosing mellow and jobless as a lifestyle.

Did you see that I used the word “extricate?” That would get you a heck of a lot of points in Scrabble. Instead of going to the Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong party, go to the Scrabble party. Maybe student-athletes would find that to be boring. But boring beats having someone guess whether you should be behind bars.


Reader Comments 5 Total
Razor1911 (6 months ago)
"If you are a female student and you get invited to a party by a student-athlete you don’t know, decline instead of being flattered. It won’t be the kind of party where a Scrabble game is going to break out."

Whether you meant to or not, you just blamed the victims right there. This kind of attitude is what is wrong with this country, and dare I say, what makes people that have Todd Akin's attitude wrong with this country. It is NOT the victim's fault that she was assaulted. It has nothing to do with her clothes. It doesn't even have anything to do with whether she drank or not. It is - pure and simple - the perpetrator's fault. Perhaps rather than suggesting that "nice girls" shouldn't go to a party like that, it might be better to suggest that parties like that should be stopped.
But What Do I Know? (6 months ago)
Like you I was not at the trial and did not hear the evidence. Like Will Rogers all I know about this is what I read in the papers.

My impression after I read the papers is the same as yours. If what the papers reported is accurate I don't know how he could have been found guilty. The burden of proof is on the prosecutor and I think it's "beyond a reasonable doubt". Well I certainly have a reasonable doubt based on what I read.

More and more convicted people are found these days to be innocent, often after serving large portions of their lives behind bars. I hope this isn't happening again.

When I read about these types of cases my first thought is always "If this happened to him it could happen to any of us". And if we think it can't I'm sure all of the innocent people who were wrongly convicted felt the same way.
I am not blaming the accusers. If I was blaming the accusers, I would have written that. I think it's good advice for anybody to decline party invitations from someone they don't know. I'll only hold myself accountable for what I actually wrote.
207869 (6 months ago)
Point of blog was we don't know if females were victims in this case.
mgsooner13 (6 months ago)
If I'm reading this correctly Mr. Tramel is criticizing our justice system because according to him it is based on "guesses" from the jury. If that's how you feel, how about proposing a system that would be better?
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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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