The North Dakota University players who were charged in petition fraud for faking signatures pleaded guilty in the courthouse Tuesday to a misdemeanor election offense.

They are sentenced to community service.

If certain pre-determined conditions are met, the players need not serve any jail time, reports kmot.com.

Each of the players will have to serve 360 days of unsupervised probation, pay $325 in fees and complete 50 hours of community service.

The players were reportedly hired to collect signatures for two citizen initiatives-to set up a state conservation fund and to make marijuana legal for medical treatments. But, now due to the fraudulent charges attached to the petitions, they won't be part of the November election ballot.

They had to get at least 50 signatures each day and those that collected a minimum of 80 names would receive bonuses. They were reportedly paid nine dollars per hour. In many of the petitions, there were indications of faking, when workers went through the signatures, like wrong zip codes, names 'signed' in the same hand and so on.

During sentencing, Judge Douglas Herman said that the defendants were 'not smart enough, grown up enough or sophisticated enough' to understand the consequences of their actions, and should not be penalized for being football players, reports The Associated Press.

He said he didn't want them to be set as special examples by treating them adversely.

"It's irrelevant to me whether they are football players, baseball players or clerical workers in some office. It's the behavior that we're looking at," said Birch Burdick, the Cass County state's attorney to The Associated Press.

"If they've got some administrative sanctions that they have to face because of their activity, that's up to the university to figure out," he said.

NDSU head coach has confirmed that the university might take some disciplinary actions against the university, but suspension is off the table.

The players who were sentenced include Samuel Ojuri, Joshua Colville, Marcus Williams, Brendin Pierre, Lucas Albers, Aireal Boyd, Demitrius Gray, Bryan Shepherd, Antonio Rogers, and Charles Smith III.