Janoris Jenkins' departure from Florida was spun as a mutual decision in Will Muschamp's initial remarks on Tuesday. But today, Jenkins is singing a different tune in comments about leaving Florida after his third arrest:
"The only thing he said was I was dismissed as soon as I walked in the room," Jenkins said. "He washed his hands of me."
That's what Jenkins told Rachel George of the Orlando Sentinel, and it's perfectly plausible and sensible sentiment — on both sides.
Jenkins can certainly whine about being let go ("They know he didn't give me no option to make. There was nothing else I could have done or said," he told George), but whether he was dismissed or reached a mutual decision to part ways, it's hard not to forgive Muschamp for taking a hard line on a player with three arrests, two for the same crime in one semester.
But, at the same time, I understand where Jenkins is coming from. It stings to screw up and to be let go, and as a player who was recruited by and played under Urban Meyer, not Muschamp, he has to have some inkling that he was accruing demerits on his permanent record with a coach who didn't have many plaudits marked down. That's the sort of situation that can leave a person with some hurt feelings.
On a more meta level: It's also amusing to see George and the Sentinel doggedly detail how Florida and Muschamp aren't owning Jenkins' dismissal by calling it as much. The substantive difference between Jenkins and Muschamp reaching a mutual decision that he should leave and Muschamp dismissing Jenkins is about whether Jenkins wanted to stay, not whether Muschamp would permit it, no? This is a skirmish over semantics, and not particularly consequential ones.
The valuable news from the Sentinel interview is that Jenkins feels that Muschamp "washed his hands" of a problem. Analyzing that, perhaps by asking Jenkins why he used that phrase, would have been more useful and interesting than trying to figure out what verb fits Muschamp's decision that Jenkins would no longer suit up for the Florida Gators.