MISSOULA, Mont. — Montana advanced to the semifinals of last season’s Football Championship Subdivision playoffs — the 11th time the team made it that far, and yet another indication of why the Grizzlies have long been a source of pride in this bucolic, football-obsessed city of 67,000.

The team, however, is now at the center of a scandal in which campus authorities and local law enforcement have been accused of doing too little to respond to claims of sexual assault. The football coach and the athletic director have been let go, a player has been arrested and the civil rights division of the United States Department of Justice recently said it would conduct a civil investigation to determine if county prosecutors and the Missoula police adequately handled numerous complaints of sexual assaults over the past three years, including 11 said to have happened on campus.

The Justice Department is also investigating the university under Title IX, part of federal education law, and Title IV, under the Civil Rights Act, for how it handled sexual assault accusations. It will coordinate with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on a sexual harassment complaint against members of the football team.

“I am surprised they felt the need to come in,” Royce C. Engstrom, the university president, said of the investigators.