THE annual US National Football League (NFL) draft took place last Thursday in Chicago — not an event that made the news in Britain.

The draft is when the league’s franchises pick the best university players. The league’s worst-performing team gets first choice, in the hopes of giving them a boost next season.

For months, it had been predicted that Jameis Winston of Florida State University (FSU) would be first up — and they were right. Winston is a stellar quarterback with the skills, athleticism and nous to be an American Football superstar.

It was a no-brainer for Tampa Bay to give him a contract.

But should they have?

Winston has got in trouble plenty of times off the field — from standing on a table at university shouting obscenities to “stealing” crab legs from a shop.Nothing too serious, though? Plenty of people have sworn in public. But there’s more.

On December 7 2012, a young woman called Erica Kinsman told the police that she’d been raped but she couldn’t identifier her attacker.

A month later, signing up for university classes, she recognised Winston. She was sure that he was her attacker.

Not knowing anything else about him, she told the Tallahassee police.

Detectives waited almost two weeks before approaching him, via a phonecall. He told them he had baseball practice and would call them back. Then his lawyer called the police and told them Winston wouldn’t talk to anyone.

Sixty-six days after Kinsman was attacked, the lead detective closed his case — without questioning key witnesses or getting DNA or phone records from Winston.

It would be another nine months before Winston was asked for a DNA sample.

When it was tested against evidence collected on the night of the attack, semen found on Kinsman’s underwear was found to be Winston’s.

In total, it took 10 months before police handed the case to a prosecutor, Willie Meggs. And only after the media had made public records requests for the files.

Meanwhile a series of death threats forced Kinsman, a grade-A student, to drop out of university, flee the city and seek therapy for extreme depression.

At the end of 2013 — almost exactly a year after Kinsman was attacked — Meggs decided not to pursue criminal charges, stating that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute.

Kinsman courageously waved her right to anonymity. She has spoken of her ordeal in a documentary titled The Hunting Ground, which looked at the role university fraternities, athletic departments and university officials play in rape investigations on campus.

She said in the documentary that she was given a drink by Winston and the next thing she knew she was back at his flat, underneath him, with Winston’s teammates Ronald Darby and Chris Casher in the room. She told him to get off her.

Casher was allegedly filming the attack and Darby begged Winston to stop. She then says that Winston took her to the bathroom and continued to assault her, forcing her head against the tiles.

When Winston was finished, he then told her she could leave.Understandably, few rape victims speak out openly against their attacker, let alone waive their right to anonymity.But Kinsman refused to let this be swept under the carpet.

She claims that lead detective Scott Angulo — who had done private security work for a non-profit organisation that bankrolls FSU’s athletics programmes — told her to “think twice before filing a report.”

Kinsman’s lawyer said Angulo warned that she would be “raked over the coals” for accusing Winston as Tallahassee “is a big football town.”

She should “think long and hard” about accusing the man she said she recognised as her attacker.

By the time that police got round to questioning witnesses, Casher had deleted his recording and the bar where Kinsman and Winston’s paths crossed had long since recycled its CCTV tapes.

So far, Winston is innocent. He has not been charged. He has not be tried. He has not been convicted. He maintains that what occurred was consensual.

But this whole affair reeks to the rafters. Even Meggs, the prosecutor, said: “It’s insane to call a suspect on the phone.”

And waiting months to interview vital witnesses, months to seek vital video evidence, months to involve a prosecutor?Meggs said the delay “hampered” his ability to put a case together.

As for the NFL, some believe Winston should be kept well clear of the sport and should not have been drafted.

“I would have to do more homework off the field because, right now, he scares me,” NFL analyst Mike Mayock said.

“He was the face of Florida State football and he continued to make bad decisions off the field.”

Winston wasn’t present when his name was called on Thursday night. It’s thought that he was told to stay away by the league because it wouldn’t look good for the sport’s chief, commissioner Roger Goodell, to be seen hugging a man accused of rape.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Winston will be present next season.

Two weeks before the draft, Kinsman filed a civil lawsuit against Winston. It has brought up additional troubling information — including about a woman who sought counselling after a sexual encounter with Winston.

The event “was of such a nature that she felt violated or felt that she needed to seek some type of counselling for her emotions about the experience.”

Given NFL player Aaron Hernandez’s recent conviction for murder, you’d think that teams would be cautious and stay clear of Winston.

Perhaps Winston’s clear, and he’ll go on to forge an impressive NFL career.

But it makes you wonder, if he didn’t have such great talent would the NFL want anything to do with him?