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• July 2006: Cornerback Qwenton Freeman throws a beer bottle at Westside Lanes. He would plead guilty to criminal mischief and receive a suspended sentence. Freeman also has two outstanding warrants from Arizona.
• February 2007: Athletic Director Jim O’Day announces the athletic department has eliminated a $1 million deficit two years ahead of schedule. The deficit was attributed in part to accounting errors under the direction of former AD Wayne Hogan, as well as extravagant football travel and high guaranteed payments to visiting football teams. A special committee appointed by the Commissioner of Higher Education found the budget had been “spiraling out of control” since the late 1990s. Retired judge Diane Barz headed the committee.
• June 2, 2007: Cornerback Jimmy Wilson allegedly shoots to death his aunt’s boyfriend in California. Qwenton Freeman witnesses the shooting and would refuse to testify. Wilson spends two years in jail before a jury acquits him in July 2009.
• June 23, 2007: Qwenton Freeman allegedly throws another beer bottle, this time at a man outside Stockman’s Bar. He’s charged with disorderly conduct and kicked off the football team.
• June 27, 2007: Responding to a spate of allegations involving football players, UM President George Dennison defends football coach and “disciplinarian” Bobby Hauck. “I think he’s been doing a good job,” Dennison says.
• June 30, 2007: Qwenton Freeman allegedly chokes and hits his girlfriend. He’s also accused of pulling her hair and throwing her to the ground outside the University Village apartments. He’s charged with assault.
• July 22, 2007: Offensive lineman J.D. Quinn is arrested for drunk driving. Quinn had a previous DUI arrest in 2005, at age 19, while playing for the Oklahoma Sooners. He left Oklahoma in 2006 after it was discovered that he and another player had been paid thousands of dollars for work they had not performed at a Norman, Okla., car dealership.
• Nov. 5, 2007: Qwenton Freeman, running back Greg Coleman, defensive end Mike Shelton and running back Jeramy Pate are among seven masked men who break into a house near campus brandishing guns, looking to steal drugs and money. One victim is pistol-whipped and repeatedly tased, while another is duct taped. Police arrest Coleman, Shelton and Pate. Freeman flees to Oregon. They’re all eventually sent to prison.
• November 2007: Montana finishes 11-1 and wins the Big Sky Conference. Its lone loss comes to Wofford in the first round of the FCS playoffs.
• April 2008: The Atlanta Falcons draft Griz defensive lineman Kroy Biermann in the 5th round. The Miami Dolphins draft running back Lex Hilliard in the 6th round. They’re the first two UM players drafted by the NFL since 2004, and it’s the first time since 1988 that two Griz are drafted the same year.
• May 22, 2008: J.D. Quinn is again arrested for drunk driving. He would plead guilty.
• Summer 2008: Washington-Grizzly Stadium undergoes a $6.5 million expansion that features a 500-seat “Stadium Club.” It’s the second major renovation in five years, following a $3.5 million expansion in 2003 that adds approximately 4,000 seats to the north end zone. Capacity is now at 25,217. Montana would lead its division in average attendance in 2009.
• Sept. 19, 2008: A surveillance camera outside Miller Hall records linebacker Andrew Douglass and defensive back Cody von Appen assaulting fellow student Jesse Johnson, who suffers a concussion, fractured jaw and chipped teeth. Safety Justin Montelius is also at the scene. All three would be kicked off the team and given deferred sentences.
• December 2008: Montana reaches the FCS Championship only to lose to Richmond. The Griz finish the season 14-2 and share the Big Sky Conference title with Weber State.
• March 2009: Cornerbacks Trumaine Johnson and Andrew Swink allegedly assault student Grady McCarthy at a frat party, fracturing his cheekbone. McCarthy does not press charges.
• Summer 2009: The Grizzly Scholarship Association tops the $2 million mark in annual giving, more than double the amount raised in 2000.
• September 2009: Coach Hauck punishes Johnson and Swink by benching them for the first game of the season. After that game, UM’s student paper, the Montana Kaimin, breaks the story about the alleged March assault. When a reporter asks Hauck about why the players didn’t compete, he reportedly says, “You’ll be done for the season if you keep bugging me about this thing that I’ve answered four ****** times.” Hauck then stonewalls Kaimin reporters for weeks.
• October 2009: Hauck’s boycott of the Kaimin prompts Deadspin to declare him “a gaping vagina of the highest order.” Jeff Pearlman, a Sports Illustrated columnist, refers to Hauck as “egomaniacal” and a “bully.” ESPN college football reporter Pat Forde calls Hauck “The Bum of the first half of the season.” The Kaimin responds by covering Griz opponents.
• December 2009: Bobby Hauck accepts the head coach position at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, ending his six-year run as one of Montana’s winningest and most controversial coaches. Hauck takes much of his staff from Missoula with him, including recruiting coordinator and linebackers coach Ty Gregorak. UNLV’s student newspaper questions the hire, considering Hauck’s tumultuous history at UM.
• December 2009: Montana wins the Big Sky Conference and reaches its second consecutive FCS Championship, but falls to Villanova, its only loss of the season.
• Dec. 31, 2009: UM hires Robin Pflugrad as its next head coach; he’d served the previous season as the team’s wide receivers coach.
• Jan. 25, 2010: UM President George Dennison announces his retirement. A staunch supporter of Griz football (Dennison’s son is an NFL coach), he touts the expansion of Washington-Grizzly Stadium among his accomplishments over the last 20 years.
• April 2010: The Atlanta Falcons draft Griz safety Shann Schillinger in the 6th round. The Tennessee Titans draft wide receiver Marc Mariani in the 7th round.
• May 7, 2010: Police arrest former UM assistant coach Ty Gregorak, now at UNLV with Bobby Hauck, for a bizarre series of events that begin outside a Colorado strip club. A police report alleges Gregorak was denied access to Club Nitro for being intoxicated and that he retaliated by stealing a .45-caliber Glock 36 handgun and a wallet from the bouncer’s Nissan Sentra. Gregorak returned the items to the bouncer the next day. The report also states that Gregorak had a Montana license that was revoked for driving while impaired on March 19. UNLV fires Gregorak. The charges, however, are later dropped after video shows it wasn’t Gregorak being turned away by the bouncer. The coach isn’t sure how the items ended up in his hotel room and claims he was drugged during the night in question.
• June 2010: Athletic Director Jim O’Day hires an independent consulting firm to study the university’s options if it receives an offer from a Football Bowl Subdivision conference. A move up would give UM access to larger television contracts and bowl game invitations, but require a substantial financial investment into the school’s existing athletic facilities.
• Aug. 6, 2010: Jimmy Wilson, back on the team after being acquitted of murder charges, bites a woman’s leg. He would plead guilty to disorderly conduct.
• Aug. 29, 2010: Linebacker Josh Stuberg is arrested for drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident after he drove into a fence in the lower Rattlesnake.
• Sept. 25, 2010: Running back Beau Donaldson, a Big Sky High School graduate, allegedly rapes a female friend sleeping on his couch. He would later admit to doing so during a police-monitored telephone conversation.
• Oct. 15, 2010: Royce Engstrom is named the University of Montana’s 17th president, replacing George Dennison. Engstrom makes a point of mentioning that, while serving as UM’s provost and vice president of academic affairs, he attended almost every Griz home football game.
• November 2010: At the end of Pflugrad’s first season, Montana misses the FCS playoffs for the first time in 17 years and finishes the season 7-4. The team also fails to share the Big Sky Conference title for the first time since 1997.
• November 2010: President Engstrom announces Griz athletics will stay in the Big Sky Conference, declining an invitation to join the Western Athletic Conference. Engstrom says the school is better suited to compete against “mission-similar” (read: smaller) programs.
• Jan. 29, 2011: Defensive tackle Roy Tyrone Duncan is arrested for drunken driving. He would plead guilty.
• Feb. 8, 2011: Head coach Robin Pflugrad hires Ty Gregorak as the team’s new linebackers coach.
• April 2011: The Miami Dolphins draft Jimmy Wilson in the 7th round.
• June 3, 2011: Quarterback Nate Montana, son of NFL great Joe Montana, is arrested for drunken driving. He would plead guilty to reckless driving.
• June 6, 2011: Tight end Kavario Middleton is arrested for drunken driving in Seattle.
• August 2011: The Grizzly Scholarship Association tops the $2 million mark in annual giving for the third consecutive year.
• Oct. 23, 2011: Cornerback Trumaine Johnson and quarterback Gerald Kemp are tased by police at a house party. They’re charged with obstructing a peace officer, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Coach Pflugrad would bench them for the first quarter of the next game. They would both plead no contest.
• December 2011: Montana returns to the top of the Big Sky Conference and the FCS playoffs, finishing the season 11-3. The Griz lose to Sam Houston State in the FCS semifinals, despite quarterback Jordan Johnson rushing for one touchdown and throwing for another.
• Dec. 16, 2011: The Missoulian reports that at least three football players were allegedly involved in a gang rape, aided by a date-rape drug, of two students the previous weekend. UM hires former state Supreme Court Justice Diane Barz to investigate.
• Dec. 31, 2011: Barz files a preliminary report stating that there is “evidence of non-consensual sex that is not being reported in the university system.”
• Jan. 17, 2012: During a community forum, UM President Royce Engstrom says the ongoing investigation into the recent spate of sexual assaults has “indicated an association with patterns of behavior of a small number of student athletes.”
• Jan. 31, 2012: UM releases the findings of Barz’s investigation, which uncovered nine cases of alleged sexual assault between September 2010 and December 2011. “UM has a problem of sexual assault on and off campus and needs to take steps to address it to ensure the safety of all students as well as faculty, staff and guests,” the report states.
• Jan. 31, 2012: Beau Donaldson pleads not guilty to rape.
Feb. 12, 2012: Head coach Robin Pflugrad promotes Ty Gregorak to defensive coordinator.
• Feb. 26, 2012: Linebacker Brian Maus is arrested for drunk driving after rolling his truck on Hillview Way.
• March 9, 2012: More than 20 NFL scouts watch cornerback Trumaine Johnson and other players work out at Washington-Grizzly Stadium. The NFL has called Johnson “arguably one of the best and most polished NFL prospects to come out of the Big Sky Conference in quite some time.”
• March 9, 2012: A woman files a temporary restraining order against quarterback Jordan Johnson, alleging that he sexually assaulted her. The order is later dismissed and a civil agreement is reached ordering that Johnson and his accuser avoid contact. That allows Johnson to return to practice March 24, which “fired up” his teammates, Pflugrad reportedly said, noting Johnson’s “character and tremendous moral fiber.”
• March 15, 2012: UM implements a new Student-Athlete Conduct Code, which includes an Athletic Conduct Team charged with enforcing code policies and imposing penalties on students who violate them.
• March 22, 2012: UM President Royce Enstrom closes the sexual assault investigation. “The events of the past few months have delivered a critical message to the university,” he writes in a memo that outlines changes in school policies. “Now we must focus on the goal of eliminating sexual assault from our campus. I will expect and hold accountable every member of my administration and indeed every member of the campus as a whole to do his or her utmost to address that goal.”
• March 28, 2012: Houston Roots, a senior starter at cornerback in 2011, is arrested for allegedly assaulting a female friend. He pleads not guilty.
• March 29, 2012: UM decides “not to renew the contracts” of athletic director Jim O’Day and football coach Robin Pflugrad, effective immediately. The school gives no explanation for the dismissals.
• March 30, 2012: UM football players pen a letter to Griz Nation, saying, “We understand and accept the fact that a few of our teammates’ actions, whether intended and deserved or not, have contributed to this unfortunate situation.”
• March 30, 2012: UM President Royce Engstrom names Mick Delaney interim head coach of the football team through the 2012 season. Engstrom names senior associate athletic director Jean Gee the interim athletic director.
• April 14, 2012: The football team’s spring scrimmage is set to be played under the new, permanent lights at Washington-Grizzly Stadium, the third major addition to the stadium since 2003.
Wow.... ](./images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
I just don't know if I can go on anymore after that.
