Yes, they did. They admitted getting the underage girl intoxicated such that she was unable to resist. They were able to plea down to sexual battery and served 100 hours community service in a ***-offender program. The prosecution agreed to the deal after the victim chose not to testify. In today's victim-shaming culture who could blame her.
Ex-UM players in campus rape case allowed to enter program for first-time offenders | Miami Herald
You may call this being 'innocent', but neither player is the type of players The U needs.
Period.
They didn't "plea down" because they didn't even take a plea at all. They entered into a diversion program, which in Miami-Dade does not require an admission of guilt/entering of a plea.
You are gullible if you believe that the State offered PTI in a rape case, with a confession, all because the AV didn't want to testify. That might be true if this were a DV case where the evidence consisted of only the AV's word against the defendant's word. If the confession was truly a confession, the State would sleepwalk their way to a conviction, with or without the AV.
You may not have a good grasp on the criminal justice system or criminal law, but seeing as there is no conviction on their records, these men never lost the presumption of innocence. So yes, they are "innocent" of any crime they were accused of.
Period.