In 2007, three Grizzlies football players and a former player broke into a home to steal money and drugs. All three were suspended from the team and convicted.In 2008, three freshman football players were charged in a beating that broke a fellow student’s jaw. Two pleaded guilty and the third pleaded no contest.
In 2009, standout cornerback Jimmy Wilson was charged in his home state of California for a fatal shooting that occurred two years earlier. He was acquitted of those charges, but later got embroiled with the law again in 2010 after his bite of a co-ed’s leg required her to go to the hospital.
… Another Griz defensive back, Trumaine Johnson, and another student were charged with beating another student unconscious in 2010. Johnson was also arrested in 2011, in conjunction with an incident with police at a party, along with teammate Gerald Kemp.
… Some … run-of-the-mill incidents involve speeding tickets, where during the course of the investigation it came out that Johnson also had unpaid speeding tickets to go with everything else.
Others involved a drunk driving incident involving Nate Montana, son of NFL legend Joe Montana – which was reduced after he pleaded guilty to reckless driving.
Former star transfer offensive lineman J.D. Quinn, too, had a second drunk driving charge mysteriously dropped – after he had already been convicted once before.
A pattern had been set: rather than handle the matters with suspensions or meaningful discipline, it appeared as if folks at Montana were trying to spin their … athletes’ way out of trouble.
… In 2011, extremely serious allegations came to light involving a party involving football players, a female victim, and the sedative Rohypnol, which is sometimes called the “date-rape” drug.
[S]oon thereafter, another woman came forward with an eerily similar story of blacking out and being raped by football players in 2010, proving that the one report was no fluke.
February 9th, 2013 at 9:13AM
[…] it has at the University of Montana, where for years now its football team has really been acting up. The latest thing is a lot of rape […]