“I’ve talked to the chair (of the Montana Board of Regents) and she’s talked to other board members. It’s the president’s decision to make and we have a commissioner’s office and a board that stands behind him in making those kinds of decisions.”

***

Pflugrad did not regret his comments in support of Johnson.

“The way the question was asked Saturday; on what he means to our team? That’s what he means to our team,” Pflugrad said. “I can’t sugarcoat something, and that’s not fair to ask me to sugarcoat anything. He is our leader.”

Pflugrad also said on the day the news broke that several football players had been implicated in a sexual assault – on Dec. 17, 2011 – he had every football player questioned in the hours before UM’s game against Sam Houston.

“We interviewed 61 players on game day,” he said. “Sixty-one. We wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing, and if there was someone we thought should be suspended for that game, we would have been sure to do it, or we wouldn’t have spent 2 1/2 hours on it.

“It was my direction. I thought it was the right thing to do.”