College Football's Latest Domestic Violence Cases Show How Little We Really Know

What we have now is a woman who has been charged and taken to jail for falsely reporting that recently dismissed Alabama football player Jonathan Taylor assaulted her, while, at the same time, Taylor has been charged with the assault.     

Look, either she made it up or he did it. Not both. But we have to accept, as media and as fans, that we don't know, and we probably never will.

This is just so confusing, so cloudy. And that's how it is with all of these domestic violence and sexual assault cases involving football players, at least the ones that don't include video from an elevator camera for proof.

The truth is we never seem to get the whole truth. Instead, we end up with a very real social problem played out publicly. The media rushes to moralize with finality for a perpetual news cycle, while the justice system slowly never fully resolves things.

So Jameis Winston is about to be the first pick in the NFL draft.

And the NCAA gave Temple's Praise Martin-Oguike an extra year of eligibility this week after he missed two years battling rape allegations that were dropped following a ruling that he was falsely accused. 

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And a woman who alleged that Arizona State football player Davon Durant had assaulted her—an allegation reported by witnesses, according to The Arizona Republic—has recanted.

And on Wednesday, AL.com reported that the woman who had accused Taylor of assaulting her also recanted.

That's not to say Taylor didn't do it. And it's not to say he did, either.

As Lt. Kip Hart, assistant commander of the Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit, told AL.com:

"

With domestic violence issues, the victims will sometimes have second thoughts about what happened. There's always an emotional attachment, whether it's pure emotion or based on financial support or family support - there are several reasons why victims change their story after a domestic violence incident.

It could be something like that, or, again, she could have fabricated the whole story and the charges against him are completely false. That's why we're still investigating this, to determine, if we can, exactly what happened.

"

I am staying out of the judging on this. The point is that it's so confusing, we should all stay out of it, because we don't know.

If these women who have recanted truly were assaulted, then they are still going through hell now.

It's not surprising when a victim recants. It has to do with what he or she is going through emotionally as a victim, which is compounded when it's played out in public. And that's a part of why it's so hard to get justice for them.

The woman who originally said Durant, her boyfriend, had assaulted her, now says she made it up after an argument.

"I was angry; I'm a woman," she said, per The Arizona Republic. "Women have mood swings."

That statement is so damaging. It will be used to question the believability of future victims.

In Taylor's case, the alleged victim originally had called police, who found a hole in her closet door and marks on her neck. Now, she says it didn't happen. And it's important that police don't just drop the case. It's possible that a woman who was assaulted has been arrested. It's also possible that Taylor didn't do it at all and has been kicked off the team with his future ruined.

But look around. The news cycle on this story already seems to have played out. There were plenty of opinions when the allegations came out. Now, the storyline has moved on to something else.

I had my own opinions earlier in the week, too, but they were about Alabama coach Nick Saban not expressing horror for the alleged victim. Instead, he got rather getting snippy and defensive about why he brought Taylor to Alabama in the first place.

"I still think Jonathan is a good person," Saban said at the time.

Taylor had been kicked off the team at Georgia last year on another domestic violence case—one that is still being played out in courts there. In January, Saban brought him into the Alabama program. Over the weekend, Saban kicked Taylor off the team.

Saban shouldn't have brought Taylor to the team in the first place. And it's hard to believe he did it out of a heartfelt need to help a young man get a second chance. More likely, it was out of a need to keep his defensive line from being run over by Ohio State again.

A University of Alabama spokeswoman announced in an email Thursday that Taylor is no longer enrolled at the school, via Melynda Schauer of Fox 6 WBRC. At Arizona State, coach Todd Graham told The Arizona Republic that he suspends any player who is arrested, and then waits for the case to play out. That case, in Arizona, hasn't been dropped because there was other evidence: the witnesses.

Now that the alleged victim said she made the whole thing up because of mood swings, some people won't believe her allegation and some won't believe her recantation. But what do you do with Durant?

We're in such a rush to reach an ultimate judgment by the end of the day's news cycle. But with the confusion and cloudiness, so often it's not even possible to get there.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report.