BUFFALO, N.Y. — Former Pitt football coach Dave Wannstedt believes he and his program were unfairly centered out in a magazine article that concluded the Panthers led the nation’s top-ranked teams in players getting into trouble with the law.

Now an assistant with the Buffalo Bills, Wannstedt on Thursday acknowledged “an unfortunate stretch of incidents last summer,” during which four players were arrested. Wannstedt, however, added he remains proud of his staff’s “body of work” regarding player behavior during his six-year tenure at Pittsburgh.

“Every player was evaluated and scrutinized, and we tried to project whether they would become productive members of our football program as well as the university at large,” Wannstedt said by phone, repeating comments he made to a Pittsburgh newspaper a day earlier. “Every player and each incident was evaluated on an individual basis. And we did our due diligence to make sure that we treated each player fair.”

His comments came a day after Sports Illustrated published the results of a six-month investigation it conducted with CBS News which found Pitt opened last season with 22 players that had faced criminal charges. The magazine reported that it did criminal background checks on every player on the roster of each team that made its top 25 preseason poll.

Pitt opened the season ranked 16th by the magazine. Iowa, which was ranked sixth, and Arkansas, ranked 23rd, each had the second-most players with criminal records (18).

On Wednesday, Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson called the number of criminal charges against his players as “totally unacceptable.” Pederson said the school is addressing the issue and moving forward.