Ex-Ohio State football player Jahsen Wint will play for Marshall

Just a couple of days after former Ohio State football teammate Amir Riep announced he was returning to college football, Jahsen Wint has done the same, announcing via a YouTube video that he will be attending Marshall University and plans to play football for the Thundering Hurd.

Both Wint and Riep were dismissed from the Ohio State football team in February 2020 following the charge of rape and kidnapping by the Columbus Police. Both were acquitted of all charges this past January.

Wint was a three-star commit from Brooklyn, New York in 2016 and was attempting to break the two-deep for Ohio State in 2020 when the unfortunate event that stole three years of Wint’s career took place.

As discussed in Episode 278 of The OHIO Podcast, the story of Riep and Wint can now be looked at through the hindsight of 20/20 vision. It might be unfair to judge whether or not Ryan Day did the right thing by dismissing both Riep and Wint from the team in 2020, especially given the temperature of society during that time when the “Me Too” movement was much more vocal.

The acquittal of both men, however, does bring up a larger point of whether or not players should be removed from a program before they have had their day in court. Why our judicial system still charges juries to keep in mind that the accused is considered innocent of all wrongdoing until the prosecution can prove their guilt through enough evidence to remove all doubt from the minds of 12 individuals, that does not mean that you are innocent until proven guilty in the court of public opinion.

Given the nature of social media and the immediacy of 24-hour news cycles both on television and on the internet, many minds within the public sphere are made up before any evidence is even available. This places tremendous pressure on a head coach to make a decision that not only affects the individuals involved but also all the individuals within the program who will also now be affected by answering questions from the media and scrutiny on campus from social warriors.

Day had no choice but to remove the accused from the Ohio State football program in order to try and make that season about football as much as possible. All of this happened before COVID became overwhelmingly the leading story for that season, which also delayed Riep and Wint from their day in court as well.

Now that both Riep and Wint have been found not guilty of the charges, and have now found new homes to continue their football careers, I can’t help but wonder if we as a society are doing wrong by placing so much anger and venom toward someone who is accused.

Should that individual be removed from a team because of an accusation? I understand that the optics of the situation look bad regardless of guilt or innocence, and there will be many, including myself, who would say this would never happen if you don’t put yourself in that situation to begin with. However, should the court of public opinion way more on a player’s career than the actual court of law?