Matthew Kenty, 18, is facing one charge of patronizing prostitutes—a Class B felony in Tennessee.
Kenty, along with nine other men, were arrested for soliciting sex from teenage girls.
Kenty is a redshirt freshman DE at Tennessee Tech.
Kenty starred on the Birmingham high school football team that won a 6A state championship in 2016 in Alabama.
According to the Tennessee Bureau of investigations, the suspects responded to a fake ad for 14-17-year-old women seeking men on Backpage:
In the course of the three-day operation, men using 697 unique phone numbers responded to the ads that were posted online, seeking to purchase illicit sex. The total number of contacts, such as text messages and calls, was 5,211. Some of the conversations between these men and undercover Agents continued after they learned they were chatting with someone they believed to be a minor. During the operation, Agents and Intelligence Analysts also gathered information in an effort to identify and recover potential victims of human trafficking.
