OFFICIAL 2023 NFL Arrests/Lawsuits/Legal Stuff

[Corbin]

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Matt Araiza plans to sue alleged gang rape victim's lawyer for defamation

Former Bills punter Matt Araiza was released last year, in the days following the filing of a civil lawsuit against Araiza and others alleging gang rape.

profootballtalk.nbcsports.com

Matt Araiza plans to sue alleged gang rape victim’s lawyer for defamation​

Posted by Mike Florio on June 20, 2023, 4:59 PM EDT

Former Bills punter Matt Araiza was released last year, in the days following the filing of a civil lawsuit against Araiza and others alleging gang rape.

Tuesday night’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO, which premieres at 10:00 p.m. ET, takes a closer look at the situation. The segment from correspondent Andrea Kremer includes an interview with Araiza.

Beyond denying all accusations and explaining that the alleged victim initiated sexual contact with him, Araiza says he will not settle the pending lawsuit at any price, and that he plans to sue attorney Dan Gilleon for defamation.

“I’ve already hired an attorney for it, and things have already been drafted,” Araiza tells Kremer. “I will never waive my right to sue him. That’s coming.”

The reference to waiving his right to sue Gilleon suggests that any settlement of the claims being made by the alleged victim would include a waiver of any claims Araiza could make against the alleged victim or Gilleon.

Gilleon also was interviewed. He vowed to move forward with the lawsuit against Araiza. But Gilleon’s story has shifted a bit, apparently, as to the core allegations of gang rape against Araiza. Given a conclusion by the prosecutor’s office that Araiza was gone from the party before the alleged gang rape happened, Gilleon has offered a revised version of the facts.

“We are not saying that he was, and we are not saying that he wasn’t,” Gilleon said. “Let’s say he was not one of the men in there. That doesn’t absolve him of liability.”

The new theory seems to be that Araiza and others had a scheme that involved targeting the alleged victim, getting her drunk, and then having sex with her. As Kremer notes, this specific theory does not appear in the civil complaint filed last August.

“Our allegation is, is he contributed heavily to the harm that she suffered that night,” Gilleon said. “He had sex with my client. Following that, she ended up having sex with multiple guys and came out of there bloodied, in shock. Ended up at the hospital, ended up with the police, and ended up traumatized. So that’s what I mean by the gang rape. Gang rapes can occur for two days. They can occur over time. They can occur multiple places. So that’s the clarification.”

Kremer pointed out to Gilleon that this seems like “a far cry” from the allegations in the civil complaint.

“I don’t know,” Gilleon said. “I think my client is going to get on the stand and tell a story that’s pretty ugly about Matt Araiza, and I think it’s going to be consistent with what that complaint is.”

The stakes for everyone will increase, if/when Araiza sues Gilleon. As explained in the attached video, that’s what former Vikings running back Dalvin Cook decided to do — and he has secured some preliminary victories. Araiza quite possibly will do the same.

For now, all that’s known is: (1) the lawsuit against Araiza will continue; and (2) Araiza will be suing Gilleon. the rest will play out in court.

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Good, sue the ever living fuck out of him. Tired of these quick to act but slow to think social justice mental midgets.

 

[Loyal]

Looks like OBJ is banned for two years....from the LSU sidelines...

LSU football vacates all wins from 2012-2015, Les Miles now ineligible for CFB Hall of Fame

The Tigers are vacating 37 wins, including two bowl game wins, because a former player was ineligible for his entire college career.

sports.yahoo.com

 

[Allen2McVay]

Looks like OBJ is banned for two years....from the LSU sidelines...

LSU football vacates all wins from 2012-2015, Les Miles now ineligible for CFB Hall of Fame

The Tigers are vacating 37 wins, including two bowl game wins, because a former player was ineligible for his entire college career.

sports.yahoo.com

 

[Tano]

Looks like OBJ is banned for two years....from the LSU sidelines...

LSU football vacates all wins from 2012-2015, Les Miles now ineligible for CFB Hall of Fame

The Tigers are vacating 37 wins, including two bowl game wins, because a former player was ineligible for his entire college career.

sports.yahoo.com

And where is the death penalty that USC got?

LSU should have more penalties than USC. USC did not once give out funds for players to come to USC. They just didn't keep track of what was happening with their players. A serious offense but not as serious as LSU imo.

 

[Loyal]

And where is the death penalty that USC got?

LSU should have more penalties than USC. USC did not once give out funds for players to come to USC. They just didn't keep track of what was happening with their players. A serious offense but not as serious as LSU imo.

Trojan homer! Reggie Bush lover!!!

 

[Tano]

Trojan homer! Reggie Bush lover!!!

I am definitely a Trojan homer. Reggie Bush lover, on the other hand, he pisses me off for starting the investigation in the first place - the dumbshit.

 

[CGI_Ram]

View: https://twitter.com/profootballtalk/status/1674908278554238982?s=61&t=lgp1gRmUcyNSF5v7CIHwMg

 

[fanotodd]

Looks like OBJ is banned for two years....from the LSU sidelines...

LSU football vacates all wins from 2012-2015, Les Miles now ineligible for CFB Hall of Fame

The Tigers are vacating 37 wins, including two bowl game wins, because a former player was ineligible for his entire college career.

sports.yahoo.com

From 10 years ago?!
Is the NCAA that backlogged? What good does this serve now?

This is why I lost a lot of my enthusiasm for college football a long time ago. It’s crooked in the worse sense. Coaches bailing on players before bowl games to take another job, or they get out just in time to avoid penalties for what happened on THEIR watch—leaving some other sap holding the bag and paying the price.

So now there are players and staff at LSU who will be affected by something that happened a decade ago.

 

[Merlin]

View: https://twitter.com/profootballtalk/status/1674908278554238982?s=61&t=lgp1gRmUcyNSF5v7CIHwMg

Some of these players man. I mean stop and realize what you have. When you start wanting to choke her move the fuck on. Dump that ass and find a new one.

 

[kurtfaulk]

Some of these players man. I mean stop and realize what you have. When you start wanting to choke her move the fuck on. Dump that ass and find a new one.

but she liked some guy's post on some shit social media site. she must be choked.

.

 

[Merlin]

but she liked some guy's post on some shit social media site. she must be choked.

.

Straight thug.

 

[Tano]

And where is the death penalty that USC got?

LSU should have more penalties than USC. USC did not once give out funds for players to come to USC. They just didn't keep track of what was happening with their players. A serious offense but not as serious as LSU imo.

@fanotodd

USC Scandal

Read this

In the University of Southern California athletics scandal, the University of Southern California (USC) was investigated and punished for NCAA rules violations in the Trojan football, men's basketball and women's tennis programs.[1]

The sanctions were announced on June 10, 2010, and affected the USC football program from 2010 to 2012. Sanctions for the football team included postseason bans (2 years), scholarship losses (3 years), vacating old games (including a BCS Championship game), and disassociating with Reggie Bush. Separately, Bush returned his Heisman Trophy. USC head coach Pete Carroll also left USC shortly before sanctions were announced.

Background​

Probes by both USC and the NCAA found that football star Reggie Bush, the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner, and basketball star O. J. Mayo had effectively forfeited their amateur status (in Mayo's case, before he ever played a game for USC) by accepting gifts from agents. In addition, the women's tennis team was cited in the report for unauthorized phone calls made by a former player.[1] As a result of the ongoing investigation, which progressed well into the 2010–11 seasons for both USC and Reggie Bush's New Orleans Saints, Bush voluntarily gave up his 2005 Heisman Trophy, which the Heisman Trust decided to leave vacant.[2][3][4]

Punishment​

As a result of sanctions issued by both USC and the NCAA, the Trojan athletic program received some of the harshest penalties ever meted out to a Division 1 program. The football team was forced to vacate the final two wins of its 2004 national championship season, as well as all of its wins in 2005. It was also banned from bowl games in both 2010 and 2011 and was docked 30 scholarships over three years. The basketball team gave up all of its wins from the 2007-08 season and sat out postseason play in 2010. The NCAA accepted USC's earlier elimination of its women's tennis wins between November 2006 and May 2009 and did not sanction the team further.[1]

Shortly after the NCAA handed out its penalties, the Football Writers Association of America announced it would no longer recognize the Trojans as its 2004 national champion.[5] In June 2011, the Bowl Championship Series stripped the Trojans of the 2004 BCS title, though the Associated Press still recognizes the Trojans as its national champions for 2004.

Bush is the first person in the Heisman Trophy's history to give his trophy back to the Heisman Trust, and the 2005 season is the only one in the award's history for which there is no winner.

Criticism of sanctions​

These sanctions have been criticized by some NCAA football writers,[6][7][8][9][10] including ESPN's Ted Miller, who wrote, "It's become an accepted fact among informed college football observers that the NCAA sanctions against USC were a travesty of justice, and the NCAA's refusal to revisit that travesty are a massive act of cowardice on the part of the organization."[11]

Miller also suggested that the sanctions had more to do with objections to the football culture at USC than its alleged noncompliance with NCAA rules:

During a flight delay last year, I was cornered at an airport by an administrator from a major program outside the Pac-12. He made fun of me as a "USC fanboy" because of my rants against the NCAA ruling against the Trojans. But we started talking. Turned out he agreed with just about all my points. (He just didn't like USC.)

He told me, after some small talk and off-the-record, that "everybody" thought USC got screwed. He said that he thought the NCAA was trying to scare everyone with the ruling, but subsequent major violations cases put it in a pickle.

Then he told me that USC was punished for its "USC-ness," that while many teams had closed down access — to media, to fans, etc. — USC under Pete Carroll was completely open, and that was widely resented. There was a widespread belief the national media fawned on USC because of this. Further, more than a few schools thought that the presence of big-time celebrities, such as Snoop Dogg and Will Ferrell, at practices and at games constituted an unfair recruiting advantage for the Trojans.

It wasn't against the rules, but everyone hated it. This, as he assessed his own smell test, was a subtext of the so-called atmosphere of noncompliance that the NCAA referred to — an atmosphere that oddly yielded very few instances of noncompliance around the football program even after a four-year NCAA investigation.[12]

In February 2014, in a talk on the campus of USC, former coach and recent Super Bowl winner Pete Carroll said about the sanctions, "I thought (the NCAA's investigation into USC) was dealt with poorly and very irrationally and done with way too much emotion instead of facts. I sat in the meetings. I listened to the people talk. I listened to the venom that they had for our program... They tried to make it out like it was something else. They made a terrible error."[13]

Comparison with later scandals​

Further criticism of the sanctions came during later NCAA's investigations into other programs such as[14] the University of Miami and University of Oregon[15] for recruiting violations, all of which led to substantially more lenient punishments than USC's for arguably greater offenses. This has led many people to think that the NCAA's sanctions of USC were intended to make an example out of the school to other programs that the NCAA hasn't followed through on with other college programs.[16]

Most notable of these scandals was that against Miami, because of the involvement of Paul Dee. Dee was the Committee on Infractions chairman for USC's NCAA investigation. It was Dee who announced the USC penalties and closed with the reminder that "high-profile athletes demand high-profile compliance." Accusations later came out that, while Dee was athletic director there, Miami had also been the center of major improper benefits, specifically that of university booster Nevin Shapiro from 2002 until 2010. Writers noted the hypocrisy of Miami's more lenient punishment (loss of nine scholarships and three years) compared to USC's, despite Miami committing more serious infractions through university employees over a longer time. One writer stated: "it seems only fair [Dee] should spend a day at USC's Heritage Hall wearing a sandwich board with the word "Hypocrite."[17][18]

In 2014, USC's sanctions once again became a talking point because of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. Sanctions against Penn State, which included a four-year bowl ban and forty lost scholarships, were significantly reduced after two years. USC petitioned the NCAA for similar leniency but was denied, the NCAA finding the situations to be distinguishable.[19] This incident led to more outcry over the inconsistency of punishment by the NCAA, and its seeming bias against USC.[20]

Todd McNair lawsuit against the NCAA​

Todd McNair, a running backs assistant coach at USC, sued the NCAA in June 2011, claiming that the NCAA's investigation was one-sided and his future earnings were impaired by its report on the scandal that led to sanctions against USC. The NCAA determined McNair lied about knowing about some of the gifts to Bush's family.

On November 21, 2012, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Frederick Shaller ruled that the NCAA was "malicious" in its investigation of McNair. In his ruling, the Judge stated that e-mails between an investigative committee member, an NCAA worker, and a person who works in the agency's appeals division "tend to show ill will or hatred" toward McNair. In an e-mail, one staffer called McNair "a lying morally bankrupt criminal, in my view, and a hypocrite of the highest order." Judge Shaller said he would unseal the entire inquiry into McNair in December. "I understand [why] the NCAA wants to keep this quiet," the Judge said. "But I'm not going to seal the record... I know you guys are going to appeal it but from my part.. There's no reason to seal it. I think the public has a right to know."[21][22]

However, on 19 December 2012, the NCAA requested and was granted a stay of Judge Shaller's order to unseal the files, much of which contain e-mails from NCAA staff personnel and committee members to one another. As a result of the stay, files regarding the NCAA's investigation into USC remained sealed until the California Appellate Court ruled on the NCAA's appeal.[23]

In February 2015, the California appellate court ruled that the NCAA cannot seal the estimated 400 pages of material regarding McNair's defamation lawsuit. The NCAA may petition the appellate court for a rehearing as well as take the matter to the California Supreme Court.[24]

In July 2021, McNair and the NCAA settled the lawsuit through mediation. Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed.[25]

I also read the results of the NCAA's findings and the only thing they found was that USC's athletes were allowed too much freedom to pretty much do anything on Campus. They never found anything else on USC other than the Bush's parents were given an apartment complex in Lake something or other 3 hours away from the campus.

They also stated that the Running Back knew of this thru a phone call the night before the 2004 championship game. McNair insisted he knew nothing of such phone call and that was the basis for the main part of the sanctions against USC. Bush's agent who gave the apartment to Bush's family was let go by Bush and he decided to go against Bush and the University.

What I have highlighted in red is pretty much why USC got the punishment it got.

All in all - USC deserved some punishment but not what they actually got.

And no university since that has done even worse stuff than USC has gotten close to the punishment USC got.

It took USC 10 years to recover and are just now starting to be a dominant university again.

 

[fanotodd]

Thanks, Tano.
I wish I could say I enjoyed the read, but it only opened another avenue of disappointment for me and collegiate football.

So many years went by only to find exactly what you said— there was cause to nail USC, but an obvious bias was exposed and the punishment was excessive compared to other programs. What I don’t understand is why the USC case took so long and why there wasn’t a serious reduction after the appeal.

 

[Mackeyser]

@fanotodd

USC Scandal

Read this

In the University of Southern California athletics scandal, the University of Southern California (USC) was investigated and punished for NCAA rules violations in the Trojan football, men's basketball and women's tennis programs.[1]

The sanctions were announced on June 10, 2010, and affected the USC football program from 2010 to 2012. Sanctions for the football team included postseason bans (2 years), scholarship losses (3 years), vacating old games (including a BCS Championship game), and disassociating with Reggie Bush. Separately, Bush returned his Heisman Trophy. USC head coach Pete Carroll also left USC shortly before sanctions were announced.

Background​

Probes by both USC and the NCAA found that football star Reggie Bush, the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner, and basketball star O. J. Mayo had effectively forfeited their amateur status (in Mayo's case, before he ever played a game for USC) by accepting gifts from agents. In addition, the women's tennis team was cited in the report for unauthorized phone calls made by a former player.[1] As a result of the ongoing investigation, which progressed well into the 2010–11 seasons for both USC and Reggie Bush's New Orleans Saints, Bush voluntarily gave up his 2005 Heisman Trophy, which the Heisman Trust decided to leave vacant.[2][3][4]

Punishment​

As a result of sanctions issued by both USC and the NCAA, the Trojan athletic program received some of the harshest penalties ever meted out to a Division 1 program. The football team was forced to vacate the final two wins of its 2004 national championship season, as well as all of its wins in 2005. It was also banned from bowl games in both 2010 and 2011 and was docked 30 scholarships over three years. The basketball team gave up all of its wins from the 2007-08 season and sat out postseason play in 2010. The NCAA accepted USC's earlier elimination of its women's tennis wins between November 2006 and May 2009 and did not sanction the team further.[1]

Shortly after the NCAA handed out its penalties, the Football Writers Association of America announced it would no longer recognize the Trojans as its 2004 national champion.[5] In June 2011, the Bowl Championship Series stripped the Trojans of the 2004 BCS title, though the Associated Press still recognizes the Trojans as its national champions for 2004.

Bush is the first person in the Heisman Trophy's history to give his trophy back to the Heisman Trust, and the 2005 season is the only one in the award's history for which there is no winner.

Criticism of sanctions​

These sanctions have been criticized by some NCAA football writers,[6][7][8][9][10] including ESPN's Ted Miller, who wrote, "It's become an accepted fact among informed college football observers that the NCAA sanctions against USC were a travesty of justice, and the NCAA's refusal to revisit that travesty are a massive act of cowardice on the part of the organization."[11]

Miller also suggested that the sanctions had more to do with objections to the football culture at USC than its alleged noncompliance with NCAA rules:










In February 2014, in a talk on the campus of USC, former coach and recent Super Bowl winner Pete Carroll said about the sanctions, "I thought (the NCAA's investigation into USC) was dealt with poorly and very irrationally and done with way too much emotion instead of facts. I sat in the meetings. I listened to the people talk. I listened to the venom that they had for our program... They tried to make it out like it was something else. They made a terrible error."[13]

Comparison with later scandals​

Further criticism of the sanctions came during later NCAA's investigations into other programs such as[14] the University of Miami and University of Oregon[15] for recruiting violations, all of which led to substantially more lenient punishments than USC's for arguably greater offenses. This has led many people to think that the NCAA's sanctions of USC were intended to make an example out of the school to other programs that the NCAA hasn't followed through on with other college programs.[16]

Most notable of these scandals was that against Miami, because of the involvement of Paul Dee. Dee was the Committee on Infractions chairman for USC's NCAA investigation. It was Dee who announced the USC penalties and closed with the reminder that "high-profile athletes demand high-profile compliance." Accusations later came out that, while Dee was athletic director there, Miami had also been the center of major improper benefits, specifically that of university booster Nevin Shapiro from 2002 until 2010. Writers noted the hypocrisy of Miami's more lenient punishment (loss of nine scholarships and three years) compared to USC's, despite Miami committing more serious infractions through university employees over a longer time. One writer stated: "it seems only fair [Dee] should spend a day at USC's Heritage Hall wearing a sandwich board with the word "Hypocrite."[17][18]

In 2014, USC's sanctions once again became a talking point because of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. Sanctions against Penn State, which included a four-year bowl ban and forty lost scholarships, were significantly reduced after two years. USC petitioned the NCAA for similar leniency but was denied, the NCAA finding the situations to be distinguishable.[19] This incident led to more outcry over the inconsistency of punishment by the NCAA, and its seeming bias against USC.[20]

Todd McNair lawsuit against the NCAA​

Todd McNair, a running backs assistant coach at USC, sued the NCAA in June 2011, claiming that the NCAA's investigation was one-sided and his future earnings were impaired by its report on the scandal that led to sanctions against USC. The NCAA determined McNair lied about knowing about some of the gifts to Bush's family.

On November 21, 2012, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Frederick Shaller ruled that the NCAA was "malicious" in its investigation of McNair. In his ruling, the Judge stated that e-mails between an investigative committee member, an NCAA worker, and a person who works in the agency's appeals division "tend to show ill will or hatred" toward McNair. In an e-mail, one staffer called McNair "a lying morally bankrupt criminal, in my view, and a hypocrite of the highest order." Judge Shaller said he would unseal the entire inquiry into McNair in December. "I understand [why] the NCAA wants to keep this quiet," the Judge said. "But I'm not going to seal the record... I know you guys are going to appeal it but from my part.. There's no reason to seal it. I think the public has a right to know."[21][22]

However, on 19 December 2012, the NCAA requested and was granted a stay of Judge Shaller's order to unseal the files, much of which contain e-mails from NCAA staff personnel and committee members to one another. As a result of the stay, files regarding the NCAA's investigation into USC remained sealed until the California Appellate Court ruled on the NCAA's appeal.[23]

In February 2015, the California appellate court ruled that the NCAA cannot seal the estimated 400 pages of material regarding McNair's defamation lawsuit. The NCAA may petition the appellate court for a rehearing as well as take the matter to the California Supreme Court.[24]

In July 2021, McNair and the NCAA settled the lawsuit through mediation. Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed.[25]

I also read the results of the NCAA's findings and the only thing they found was that USC's athletes were allowed too much freedom to pretty much do anything on Campus. They never found anything else on USC other than the Bush's parents were given an apartment complex in Lake something or other 3 hours away from the campus.

They also stated that the Running Back knew of this thru a phone call the night before the 2004 championship game. McNair insisted he knew nothing of such phone call and that was the basis for the main part of the sanctions against USC. Bush's agent who gave the apartment to Bush's family was let go by Bush and he decided to go against Bush and the University.

What I have highlighted in red is pretty much why USC got the punishment it got.

All in all - USC deserved some punishment but not what they actually got.

And no university since that has done even worse stuff than USC has gotten close to the punishment USC got.

It took USC 10 years to recover and are just now starting to be a dominant university again.

I was born at UCLA and hate the Trojans with a passion… and even I said at the time that they got jobbed. The NCAA did the Trojans dirty and I reserve that right for the UCLA Men’s Basketball team

 

[Neil039]

Looks like OBJ is banned for two years....from the LSU sidelines...

LSU football vacates all wins from 2012-2015, Les Miles now ineligible for CFB Hall of Fame

The Tigers are vacating 37 wins, including two bowl game wins, because a former player was ineligible for his entire college career.

sports.yahoo.com

Watching it on tv and the looks people had on their faces. Every bill he handed out was like Oprah giving out dishes on her show. Very moronic move by OBJ

 

[Tano]

Thanks, Tano.
I wish I could say I enjoyed the read, but it only opened another avenue of disappointment for me and collegiate football.

So many years went by only to find exactly what you said— there was cause to nail USC, but an obvious bias was exposed and the punishment was excessive compared to other programs. What I don’t understand is why the USC case took so long and why there wasn’t a serious reduction after the appeal.

The punishment by the NCAA could not be reduced by a US Court. Only the NCAA could reduce the punishment. And they did not want to admin any wrong doing.

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

Any time a team suddenly becomes a dominant power in college football, I expect it is the boosters giving away cars and bag money, etc…

I think it’s foolish to assume otherwise. That’s one good thing about the NIL money. It evens the playing field a bit.

Most SEC schools, USC and several others lured players with gifts, money, hookers, or Co-Eds pretending to have interest in players.

Yes @Tano USC was guilty. Auburn was guilty, now LSU is guilty. The NCAA could never control what boosters did, the boosters knew it, the coaches and schools knew it.

 

[Loyal]

Some of these players man. I mean stop and realize what you have. When you start wanting to choke her move the fuck on. Dump that ass and find a new one.

But it's true love.... ~ NFL

 

[Loyal]

Any time a team suddenly becomes a dominant power in college football, I expect it is the boosters giving away cars and bag money, etc…

I think it’s foolish to assume otherwise. That’s one good thing about the NIL money. It evens the playing field a bit.

Most SEC schools, USC and several others lured players with gifts, money, hookers, or Co-Eds pretending to have interest in players.

Yes @Tano USC was guilty. Auburn was guilty, now LSU is guilty. The NCAA could never control what boosters did, the boosters knew it, the coaches and schools knew it.

USC was framed! ~ @Tano

 

[Tano]

Any time a team suddenly becomes a dominant power in college football, I expect it is the boosters giving away cars and bag money, etc…

I think it’s foolish to assume otherwise. That’s one good thing about the NIL money. It evens the playing field a bit.

Most SEC schools, USC and several others lured players with gifts, money, hookers, or Co-Eds pretending to have interest in players.

Yes @Tano USC was guilty. Auburn was guilty, now LSU is guilty. The NCAA could never control what boosters did, the boosters knew it, the coaches and schools knew it.

Yes they probably were guilty but they had zero evidence other than the agent saying he gave an home to Bush's parents to rent at a very cheap rate in Lake Elsinore

They should not have been punished as bad as they were with the evidence that they had

It was pure utter jealousy that the NCAA had of USC