Watson: Suspension nightmare
TALLAHASSEE (AP) – Dekoda Watson was one of 60 Florida State athletes suspended as a result of an academic cheating scandal and the first to own up to his role.
It didn’t make missing the first three games of last season any easier. The linebacker said he cried about it plenty of times.
“I couldn’t blame anybody but myself,” the 21-year-old senior said. “I know what’s right and I know what’s wrong. If it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.”
Watson, Florida State’s leading returning tackler, now is being counted on to lead a defense that must replace seven starters from last year. The Seminoles’ season starts Monday at home against archrival Miami.
“He’s one of our very best football players,” veteran defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews said. “He’s got to be a pacesetter.”
Injuries also have slowed the 6-foot-1, 230-pound Watson, whose instincts and speed remind some of former Florida State and Tampa Bay Buccaneers great Derrick Brooks.
“He’s got a lot of similarities,” Andrews said. “Dekoda’s very fast, very strong and very athletic.”
Watson is slightly faster than Brooks, Andrews added.
Speed alone is just one factor.
“When you saw Brooks play, you saw one of the smartest players to ever the play the game at linebacker,” Andrews said. “It’s just uncanny what he knew about the game. That’s the thing Dekoda is constantly working on now.”
While the memory of the cheating scandal and suspension still stings, Watson is moving ahead.
After sitting out spring practice due to elbow surgery, he’s looking forward to the season and graduation in December when he picks up his degree in social science.
“It was an experience that I’m always going to learn from and keep in the back of my mind,” he said. “I’ve learned so many things at Florida State, even from the suspension.”
The cheating occurred mainly through online testing for a single music history course in the fall of 2006 and the spring and summer semesters of 2007. It included staffers helping students on the test and in one case asking one athlete to take it for another.
Watson was at his South Carolina home watching television with a helpless feeling as a Florida State team crippled by suspensions lost to Kentucky in the 2007 Music City Bowl.
Vanilla ice cream was the only thing that tasted good to him over that holiday period when he contemplated leaving the school.
“It definitely was a depressing time for me,” Watson recalled. “I felt like giving up. I didn’t want to play any more. I felt like I’d been betrayed.”
The self-pity continued through the first three games last season when he was forced to watch from the stands, a particularly grueling time during the Seminoles’ loss to Wake Forest in the last game of the suspension.
“I cried plenty of times, but people wouldn’t have known that because I put on a front,” he said. “It’s a new day, a new time.”