Marquette Sports Law Review Volume 16 Article 10 Issue 2 Spring Winning at All Costs: An Analysis of a University's Potential Liability for Sexual Assualts Committed by its Student Athletes Jenni E. Spies Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw Part of the Entertainment and Sports Law Commons Repository Citation Jenni E. Spies, Winning at All Costs: An Analysis of a University's Potential Liability for Sexual Assualts Committed by its Student Athletes , 16 Marq. Sports L. Rev. 429 (2006) Available at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw/vol16/iss2/10 This Comment is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. COMMENT WINNING AT ALL COSTS: AN ANALYSIS OF A UNIVERSITY'S POTENTIAL LIABILITY FOR SEXUAL ASSAULTS COMMITTED BY ITS STUDENT ATHLETES INTRODUCTION On December 29, 2005, just four days before he was supposed to suit up for the Florida State Seminoles in the FedEx Orange Bowl, senior linebacker A.J. Nicholson sat in a Hollywood, Florida police station and was questioned about allegedly sexually assaulting a nineteen-year-old woman. 1 On January 27, 2005, star University of Iowa basketball player Pierre Pierce threatened the life of a former girlfriend, forcibly disrobed her, held her at knifepoint, and vandalized her apartment. 2 In February 2004, three Virginia Tech football players, including quarterback Marcus Vick, were charged with at least ten misdemeanors arising from an incident where they gave alcohol to three fifteen-year-old girls, took pictures of them, and had sex with at least one of the girls.3 Are all three of these sexually violent acts isolated incidents, or is 1.