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Montana Grizzlies athletes who come to school in Missoula on scholarships aren't here for free. Sure, it's free to them, but it's not free. Someone is paying for it. Whether it be through those spiffy Griz license plates, buying season tickets or simply donating straight to the GSA, there are people paying for the athletes' education.

There's a great article by Dan Thompson in today's Idaho State Journal on this issue.

Coaches like to say their athletes aren't unique in regards to life experience and that they can't track their players whereabouts outside of practice. In this, coaches are correct.

''These are good, solid people coaching these teams,'' Montana coach Bobby Hauck said at the Big Sky meetings in July. ''There are good kids on these teams. I'm around enough of them on a daily basis to say these college football players are no different than anyone else on campus.''

Hauck is right about the first part, but he's only half right about the second. Yes, college football players are the same age as their classmates, prone to all the same whims and wiles.

But college athletes are also being paid, and therefore they are not like other students. They are the faces of their institutions, the same as a professor or a student body president would be. It comes with the money.

Players, then, cannot simply be defined by their actions on the field. Even moreso, they will be remembered for their transgressions away from competition. Get burned by a wide receiver and fans will forget. They won't forget a DUI so easily.

Perhaps the NFL's renewed emphasis on character will make players like Quinn realize a scholarship isn't a pass for stupidity, and that the next level won't tolerate such repeated idiocy. It doesn't take much to follow the law. Millions of people do so successfully and without incident their entire lives.

Coaches know all about privilege, and they preach it. But it shouldn't take a coach's speech to get athletes to understand the concept. Athletes simply need look at people sitting at the desks around them.

Then they will understand what privilege really means.

Scholarship or not, college kids are college kids and some will make stupid mistakes. However, when you're an athlete getting what's almost a $100,000 value (out of state tuition is about 22k per year) for free while other's have to pay that, we get to hold you to a higher standard. That's the deal.

If Jimmy Williams runs around town acting like an idiot and showing off his pistol, we get to be pissed. When he commits a terrible crime and has the press mention University of Montana and murder in the same sentence, we get to hate him. And when JD Quinn commits his third DUI after getting kicked out of his previous school for taking money he didn't earn, we have the right to be a little irked and start thinking that he may not be such great guy. Sure, Bobby got you here, but it's the fans who paid the way.