When you're in school, football affects your life in one way or another. Football games are a great opportunity to meet new people and show your school spirit at the same time. Many people love football, and even when a team is losing, they show up just for the fun of the game. Schools make money off of this, especially when their team is winning, and even surrounding areas can make money by showing spirit for their local team.

While there is nothing wrong with college or high school sports, what happens when this goes too far? When football players and coaches are seen as untouchable by the legal system, even at the expense of students? This is seen with crimes like theft and domestic abuse, but one of the most high-profile cases revolve around when a football player sexually assaults a student, and the lack of response from school officials.

This week, Florida State accuser Erica Kinsman was paid $950,000 by FSU as a settlement for the 2012 Jameis Winston rape case. This was a case where FSU failed to test Kinsman's rape kit til almost a year later, waited 34 days to identify the accused, and closed the investigation without actually investigating anything. This was in blatant violation of Title IX, a law that requires university to, among other things, take rape claims seriously and make college safe for victims. While some consider this settlement an admission of guilt, FSU admitted no libability in the case, and the FSU president slammed Kinsman in a recent statement, saying that they would've won if they continued the case. However, many media outlets called out FSU's president for that statement, saying that the case was far from over. As of now, FSU is facing investigation by the federal government for breaking Title IX.

While it seems like this is an isolated case, schools have a habit of defending football players at the expense of other students. Steubenville High School was a huge football town, and when two football players raped a minor, she was humiliated and victim-blamed on social media. Despite there being a mass amount of witnesses, nobody was willing to come forward to defend the victim, and evidence showed that police and school officials were given the football players special treatment. At a Kentucky high school, a young girl was raped by two football players who only got 50 hours of community service. The victim was told to "get over it and get a therapist." Not even children are safe from this, as was shown when Penn State University faced controversy for covering up child sex abuse at the hands of their former coach Jerry Sandusky.

What all of these cases have in common is that it was more important to school officials that a football team stays great than that a victim faces justice. For every Duke Lacrosse case, there's two cases like Steubenville. The crazy thing is, false rape accusations happen at the same rate, if not less, than any other crime (the false accusation rate is 2 to 10 percent). Yet victims have to jump through hoops to prove their innocence.

This isn't to say we should automatically punish someone for being accused of rape. This also isn't to say that one shouldn't be allowed to enjoy college football. However, one should not get special treatment because they play a sport, especially when evidence is stacked against them. In order to stop this, we need to challenge a culture that puts football above anything else and allow people to enjoy a sport without letting the sport overtake the justice system. It's the least we can do for victims and students.