Mike Bianchi: College football player gives unknown woman at Walmart $100 to pay for groceries

It seems all we ever see and hear in sports anymore are the revelations and allegations of football players mistreating women.

We can’t escape the ugly headlines; the lingering sexual assault allegations against Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston; the virulent video of Ray Rice knocking his future wife unconscious in that casino elevator; and the conviction of Carolina Panthers defensive star Greg Hardy for beating up and threatening to kill his former girlfriend.

Then, just when you are about to lose faith in humanity, you come across this emotional email from a woman who is not accusing a football player of a violent crime; she’s actually thanking him for a good deed.

“I have been blessed with the most generous act of kindness my soul has ever witnessed,” the woman wrote in her email to Stetson University’s athletic department. “I am a local DeLand resident who is very grateful for what I have, but honest to say, I don’t have much. While I was finishing up some shopping with my five children at Wal-Mart, I went to the checkout counter and was informed my food stamps were not valid and I did not have more than $20 to my name.

“I immediately burst into tears and begged the cashier for mercy when out of nowhere a young man wearing a Stetson football shirt handed $100 and left his groceries behind him. I (found out later) the young man’s name was Trezdun Jackson. I was so overwhelmed with this act that I didn’t really have a chance to properly thank him. Please relay this message to the young man and let him know that his help will never be forgotten, and we are more than extremely grateful for the money he gave us.”

I guess Trez Jackson, a sophomore defensive back at Stetson, didn’t get that memo a few weeks ago when he was standing in line at Wal-Mart. Either that or Stetson, an NCAA Football Championship Subdivision non-scholarship program that just started playing last year, forgot to tell its players they are supposed to be angry and mean-spirited; not thoughtful and big-hearted.

Jackson had a Division I Football Bowl Subdivision scholarship offer from North Texas, but he chose Stetson because he fell in love with the campus, because he believed in the vision Coach Roger Hughes described to him of helping resurrect a program and, yes, because of the educational opportunities Stetson provided.

Trez is just a normal college student, pinching pennies to get by, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and relying on mom and dad to help him defray costs.

Then why, Trez?

Why give a lady you don’t even know $100 at Wal-Mart?

“The items in my cart were irrelevant,” Trez says. “She had kids she was trying to feed. You could tell she was having a rough time of it. I didn’t really think about it; it just seemed like the right thing to do.”

How about that?

It is a crazy, whacked-out world we live in; a world that has become so noisy and noxious that we so seldom get to hear the true song of sports anymore.

Then you come across Trez Jackson, a good kid with a bright future who is lending a hand, not raising one, to a struggling woman.