All over the board

As the University of Arizona’s starting quarterback, Jayden de Laura is the face of the Wildcats’ football program. As the former punter for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, Matt Araiza was the type of player who typically didn’t make headlines unless it was for the wrong reasons—on or off the field.

De Laura has been mired in a controversy involving alleged sexual assault and remains on his team. Araiza, by contrast, is out of a job—despite having been all but exonerated in the gang rape of a teenage girl—and he isn’t likely to sign with an NFL team anytime soon.

As the NFL and college football seasons begin, de Laura and Araiza provide a study in contrasts concerning how big-time college and professional sports teams now handle ­scandals involving players accused of sex crimes.

Nicknamed the “punt god” for setting multiple NCAA punting records, Araiza was a rookie with the Bills in 2022. Four months into his rookie season, accusations surfaced that he was involved in the gang rape of a 17-year-old girl at a party during his time at San Diego State University.

Never mind that investigations by both the university and the San Diego District Attorney’s Office cleared Araiza of criminal conduct: The simple accusations were enough to move the Bills to cut ties.

Although Araiza has tried out for some other teams, none has offered him a contract. For this reason, Araiza has filed a defamation lawsuit against the young woman who accused him of rape. (The woman filed a civil suit against Araiza after the San Diego district attorney opted not to press charges against him.)

“You don’t get to just create lies about people and take their career from them,” Araiza told USA Today. He told NFL Rookie Watch, which chronicles first-year pro football players via X, the website ­formerly known as Twitter, that there was “no way” he would not be under contract with an NFL team were he a highly skilled quarterback rather than a highly skilled punter.

He has a point: The NFL suspended Cleveland Browns quarterback DeShaun Watson for 11 games and fined him $5 million last season after 24 women filed sexual misconduct lawsuits against him. Watson not only remains on the Browns’ roster, he’s at the top of the team’s depth chart at its most high-profile position.

The same is true of de Laura at the University of Arizona. A teenage girl accused de Laura and his high school teammate, Kamo’i Latu, of sexually assaulting her. Documentation of any charges against de Laura and Latu is under seal because all parties involved were minors at the time of the alleged incident.

Still, news of the alleged incident surfaced because the girl filed a civil suit against de Laura in December 2021. The lawsuit claimed de Laura pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault, which de Laura has publicly denied.

Neither de Laura nor Latu served jail time. As part of their restitution, each reportedly had to write a letter of ­apology to the alleged victim.

But the story continues to dog de Laura. During the Pac-12 Conference’s media day in late July, reporters asked him and Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch about the civil suit. That was when de Laura denied having pleaded guilty. Fisch said he and ­others at Arizona had done their own due ­diligence about de Laura before the QB transferred to the school from Washington State University.

“All the research that we did, we learned that Jayden was never guilty, never pleaded guilty or was found guilty of anything,” Fisch told reporters.

De Laura has since settled the civil suit with the alleged victim for an undisclosed amount. From a legal standpoint, settling is not the same as an admission of guilt. Defendants often settle cases because doing so is cheaper than fighting for full exoneration.

Still, in similar situations, major universities and pro teams have distanced themselves from star athletes who, like de Laura, stated their innocence after news reports claimed they’d pleaded guilty to sex crimes. Case in point: Luke Heimlich, a former star pitcher for Oregon State University’s baseball program.

Heimlich sat out the 2017 College World Series after a reporter discovered that Heimlich had pleaded guilty to molesting a younger family member while still a juvenile. He returned for his senior season in 2018, leading OSU to a national title, but no Major League Baseball team drafted him despite his stellar pitching numbers. Teams in ­foreign countries have shunned him, too.

Universities have also fired wildly successful coaches who allegedly let sexual misconduct go unchecked within their programs: Examples include Penn State’s Joe Paterno, Baylor’s Art Briles, and most recently, Pat Fitzgerald of Northwestern.

The University of San Francisco fired baseball coach Nino Giarratano, who won more than 600 games at the Dons’ helm, for the same reason in 2022.

Arizona must have its reasons for sticking with quarterback de Laura in today’s post-#MeToo climate. But it seems a player in Araiza’s position—a punter who, in the eyes of the law, has been cleared of wrongdoing—can’t catch a break.