The SALT LAKE DESERET MORNING NEWS reports on a frightening fight involving a couple University of Utah football players and a recruit.

It happened Saturday night, and the players claim they were attacked by a “group of men” who initially yelled obscenities from their car at the athletes and their friends as they walked away from a gathering at a house in a Salt Lake City neighborhood.

The players, freshman defensive end Paul Kruger, junior defensive lineman Greg Newman and Kruger’s younger brother David, a recruit who plans to sign with the Utes next month, claim they told the men to “shut up” and “get out of here“. Newman then threw a snowball at the car, which apparently prompted those surly “group of men” to get out of the car and approach the players.

That’s when things got really, REALLY ugly.

Two more cars pulled up and the three players were apparently attacked from all sides.

Excerpt: “Paul Kruger was stabbed in the ribs and abdomen with a knife, while Newman was stabbed twice in the back with a screwdriver. David Kruger was punched in the right cheek with a hard metal object, believed to be brass knuckles. The assailants are still unknown and police have yet to name any suspects in the case.”

Kruger later needed four hours of surgery to repair a punctured lung. His blood pressure dropped dramatically on the way to the hospital, but because an emergency nurse happened to be at the scene of the altercation, Kruger survived the ordeal and is expected to make a full recovery.

The other two ballplayers also went to the hospital for minor wounds and have since been released.

The assailants haven’t been caught, and police apparently don’t have many leads to go on.

This is an awful tale, and there’s no doubting the injuries the players suffered. But don’t you get the feeling there’s a tad more to this story? And that perhaps the players aren’t all that upset that the assailants haven’t been located? We could be way off on this, but we find it hard to believe that telling some guys in a car to “shut up” and throwing a snowball at them would equal a knife through the lung.