Big Sky Football: Montana State QB is sitting out a season
Oops. Looks like someone forgot to study for finals. Montana State gunslinger Chris Murray is out for the season due to not meeting academic qualifications.
Montana State’s starting quarterback the past two seasons, junior Chris Murray, won’t get to play for the Bobcats in 2018. It appears his grades aren’t exactly up to par.
According to head coach Jeff Choate,
"Chris is obviously an important part of this team but everyone that enters this program and this University knows that academics are the top priority. This will be a year for Chris to get his priorities in order and raise his academic work to the standard that MSU and this football program demand."
That’s not a good thing for the Bobcats– Murray was a second-team preseason all-American. As a starter last season, he rushed for over 1,000 yards, scored 10 touchdowns, and completed an impressive 120 of 233 passes. (That’s over 50 percent, y’all.)
The Bobcats only had a 5-6 record, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Despite the Bobcats’ less-than-stellar record, Murray is one of the best players in the Big Sky conference–he has beaten the 100-yard rushing mark several times. He also helped the team to soundly defeat their rival, Montana, for two years running.
As as a freshman, Murray started in five games. He won Big Sky Conference freshman of the year and totaled 1,638 yards. He is one of only three Big Sky quarterbacks to have 1,000 yards rushing in a single season. That is going to make his absence from the lineup a bitter pill to swallow, indeed.
The team has several quarterbacks on their roster, though. The Bobcats have potential quarterbacks Travis Jonsen, Tucker Rovig, Luke May, Casey Bauman and Callahan O’Reilly. However, we won’t truly know much more about these players until the team starts their practices at the beginning of August.