Woman Alleges Minnesota’s Nathan Tow-Arnett Choked and Kicked Her

Nathan Tow Arnett

It hasn’t been a great couple of weeks for Tim Brewster’s Minnesota Golden Gophers.  Be it on the field or off of it.  While the Gophers have dropped three of their last four games and are now forced to scramble to get their sixth win of the season, they’ve also had players finding themselves in trouble with the law quite a bit the last few weeks.

The latest player to find himself in some hot water is reserve defensive back Nathan Tow-Arnett.  Tow-Arnett was reportedly at a Halloween party last weekend when his girlfriend and another girl got into some sort of altercation.  Tow-Arnett broke into the fight in an effort to separate the two girls, but according to Neena Kurian he didn’t go about it in a very peaceful manner.

Unless you consider choking and kicking to be friendly anyway.

In an interview with the Pioneer Press today, Neena Kurian alleged that Tow-Arnett, trying to break up a dispute between her and his girlfriend, threw Kurian against a wall before repeatedly kicking her while she was on the ground.

According to Kurian, she had attended a concert with Tow-Arnett and others the night of Oct. 30 before attending a house party early Halloween morning. Kurian alleged that she and Tow-Arnett ‘s girl friend got into an argument before Tow-Arnett stepped in.

“Everybody was trying to calm her down, but that’s when he got involved and grabbed me by the neck and threw me up against the wall,” Kurian said. “I don’t know how much she had to drink, but I had three drinks at the most all night. She had been drinking, but he supposedly hadn’t been. He drove everyone there.”

Now it’s very important to point out that no charges have been filed against Tow-Arnett in this case and he has not been arrested.  What that means exactly we’ll have to wait and see, but in my opinion I would think that if this incident happened at a party there would be plenty of witnesses to corraborate the story.

It could just be that police are talking to witnesses trying to get a clearer picture of what happened before they decide to do anything.

The school is not allowing T0w-Arnett to comment on the matter, though AD Joel Maturi says that he’s spoken to Tow-Arnett and that Nathan’s story of the incident is quite a bit different than the one Kurian is telling.

Either way, this is not a good thing for the Gophers program. While it’s pretty commonplace for players to get in trouble with the law during the offseason while they’re not being supervised by the school or coaches, arrests during the season tend to lead to coaches being let go.  Especially when you’re losing.  I mean, there are Florida Gators players getting in trouble too, but Urban Meyer is winning national titles down in Gainesville, and whether it’s fair or not — and it isn’t — folks will tend to look the other way while that’s happening.

With the recent troubles of Gary Tinsley and Michael Carter, combined with this incident, and it’s possible that the heat could start getting turned up on Tim Brewster.  It’s incredibly unfair and unrealistic to expect a football coach to be able to babysit and keep an eye on every single player he has on the team all the time, but unfortunately it seems that is what’s expected of them.  So it’s pretty important that Brewster gets a handle on this situation and puts an end to it as quickly as possible.

Because if it continues there’s going to be a fall guy, and that fall guy will be Brewster.