Breaking Fitzgerald out at NW

[HuskerDocCo]

Dear Northwestern community,
This afternoon, I informed Head Football Coach Pat Fitzgerald that he was being relieved of his duties effective immediately.
The decision comes after a difficult and complex evaluation of my original discipline decision imposed last week on Coach Fitzgerald for his failure to know and prevent significant hazing in the football program. Over the last 72 hours, I have spent a great deal of time in thought and in discussions with people who love our University — the Chair and members of our Board of Trustees, faculty leadership, students, alumni and Coach Fitzgerald himself. I have also received many phone calls, text messages and emails from those I know, and those I don’t, sharing their thoughts. While I am appreciative of the feedback and considered it in my decision-making, ultimately, the decision to originally suspend Coach Fitzgerald was mine and mine alone, as is the decision to part ways with him.
While the independent investigative report will remain confidential, it is important for our community to know the facts.

• During the investigation, eleven current or former football student-athletes acknowledged that hazing has been ongoing within the football program. In new media reporting today, still more former Northwestern football student-athletes confirmed that hazing was systemic dating back many years. This has never been about one former student-athlete and his motives; this is much bigger than that.
• The hazing included forced participation, nudity and sexualized acts of a degrading nature, in clear violation of Northwestern policies and values. I am grateful that — to my knowledge — no student suffered physical injury as a result of these behaviors.
• While some student-athletes believed the hazing was in jest and not harmful, others viewed it as causing significant harm with long-term consequences.
• The hazing was well-known by many in the program, though the investigator failed to find any credible evidence that Coach Fitzgerald himself knew about it.
• As the entire six-month independent investigation was confidential, I only recently learned many of the details, including the complainant’s identity. I spoke with his parents on Friday and the student on Sunday.

Since Friday, I have kept going back to what we should reasonably expect from our head coaches, our faculty and our campus leaders. And that is what led me to make this decision. The head coach is ultimately responsible for the culture of his team. The hazing we investigated was widespread and clearly not a secret within the program, providing Coach Fitzgerald with the opportunity to learn what was happening. Either way, the culture in Northwestern Football, while incredible in some ways, was broken in others.
There is no doubt that Coach Fitzgerald has had a tremendous impact on our institution, well beyond the football field. For nearly thirty years, he has given himself to Northwestern as a student-athlete, assistant coach and head coach, and he has positively impacted the lives of hundreds of young men. His players have almost all graduated and represented the University with distinction. Over the last two days, I have received hundreds and hundreds of emails describing how he has transformed the lives of current and former student-athletes. However, as much as Coach Fitzgerald has meant to our institution and our student-athletes, we have an obligation — in fact a responsibility — to live by our values, even when it means making difficult and painful decisions such as this one. We must move forward.
I recognize that my decision will not be universally applauded, and there will be those in our community who may vehemently disagree with it. Ultimately, I am charged with acting in the best interests of the entire University, and this decision is reflective of that. The damage done to our institution is significant, as is the harm to some of our students.
In the days ahead, Combe Family Vice President for Athletics & Recreation Derrick Gragg will announce the leadership for this upcoming football season, and I encourage all of you to rally around the young men in our football program as they take the field this fall. As always, the welfare of our students is paramount and we will move forward expeditiously to make the reforms I outlined in my letter, dated July 8.
Over my ten months serving as your President, I have found the Northwestern University community to be proud, to be passionate, to be supportive, and yes, to be demanding. While today is a difficult day, I take solace in knowing that what we stand for endures. Finally, I am grateful for the partnership and support of the Board of Trustees and Chair Peter Barris.

very lawyerly in that response BELCH whew! That one reverberated thru my innerds

 

[nscottie]

Fitz spoke to players last night. Brought his wife and kids with him. How awkward for his son who is on team. Feel bad for son, tough situation.

 

[djw004]

Are the AD and President next to go? They knew of these reports, decided on a 2 week suspension and that was good enough in their eyes until it went public and people freaked out for 2 days. Theoretically, they are just as much to blame as leaders of the university/athletic department, no?

 

[Bootleg11]

The more I read into this the more it sounds like some locker room stuff that maybe offended a few guys. They told those stories to people who had never been in a locker room before and of course the media blew it out of proportion.

When I was in college, our starting center would wait, naked, in a 3 point stance. As soon as a freshman walked through the door he'd snap it to them. If they caught the snap, he'd jump up and down clapping for them and then give them a big, naked hug. So his fatness and dick are swing around in joy because you caught the ball and then he'd give you a big hug. Lol so dumb, but fucking funny.

To us, growing up in a locker room, that was just funny. If you've never experienced locker room behavior, it seems wildly inappropriate. This is what this feels like to me.

Now if they were fingering buttholes or something, then yeah that's weird even by locker room standards.

But I think a few ex players had a vendetta. I think Northwestern has a bunch of media students that want to be able to say they took down the mean old traditional, white head coach. And you have a new president and AD at the school who know they can't win the fight with the media.

 

[Huskerforlife]

 

[Bootleg11]

See you get a nerd like this, that has never been on a sports team that thinks that a guy who coached for 17 years at a school some how ran a giant racist, sex tortured scheme right under NW Media students noses for almost two decades.

 

[Bootleg11]

Northwestern in the transfer portal era is a rough job. They'll get some good candidates because they can pay with that Big 10 cash.

But they don't even let transfers come in for spring semester at Northwestern.

 

[Carm]

Are the AD and President next to go? They knew of these reports, decided on a 2 week suspension and that was good enough in their eyes until it went public and people freaked out for 2 days. Theoretically, they are just as much to blame as leaders of the university/athletic department, no?

They were both recent hires, after the hazing allegations came to light last November, so I'd guess No

 

[djw004]

The more I read into this the more it sounds like some locker room stuff that maybe offended a few guys. They told those stories to people who had never been in a locker room before and of course the media blew it out of proportion.

When I was in college, our starting center would wait, naked, in a 3 point stance. As soon as a freshman walked through the door he'd snap it to them. If they caught the snap, he'd jump up and down clapping for them and then give them a big, naked hug. So his fatness and dick are swing around in joy because you caught the ball and then he'd give you a big hug. Lol so dumb, but fucking funny.

To us, growing up in a locker room, that was just funny. If you've never experienced locker room behavior, it seems wildly inappropriate. This is what this feels like to me.

Now if they were fingering buttholes or something, then yeah that's weird even by locker room standards.

But I think a few ex players had a vendetta. I think Northwestern has a bunch of media students that want to be able to say they took down the mean old traditional, white head coach. And you have a new president and AD at the school who know they can't win the fight with the media.

I would venture that some variation of the "carwash" described happens in 95% of High School and College locker rooms across the country

 

[djw004]

They were both recent hires, after the hazing allegations came to light last November, so I'd guess No

Wasn't saying I even think they should be - just stating that their justification of Fitz being where the buck stops in the football program SHOULD then trickle UPhill. The buck stops with the AD for the happenings of the athletic department. The buck stops with the president on the happenings of school organizations. Both of those leaders gave the thumbs up to a slap-on-the-wrist suspension. By their own standards they would be just as guilty as Fitzy.

That's my only point - I don't even care whether they are or not...But unless it is verified and accurate that Fitz was encouraging this behavior or pointing out guys to "run" in practice, I cannot believe this is where they ended up. They have a broken argument here.

This is one of the things that changes a bit with NIL to me - you can't say "PAY US WHAT WE DESERVE" while simultaneously saying "They are just kids that don't know any better." False - they are on a payroll now. There is conduct they have to be responsible for. If I go "carwash" a coworker, I shouldn't have my job, but my boss shouldn't be impacted. If my boss TELLS me to go "carwash a coworker" - then they shouldn't have their job.

If we got caught hazing as 15 year olds in high school, WE were to blame. Not the coach. We would at least get a detention or some sort of discipline. The coach wasn't on the chopping block. Because here is the other side of this coin - wouldn't it be weirder if Fitz was actually in the locker room watching his players shower to know they were "carwashing" in the first place? Unless this was ACTUALLY reported to him/his staff, and he approved of it/encouraged it to either start or continue, how the HELL is he supposed to know about shower-room hijinx?

 

[Mavsker]

Have you been to the beach during spring break? Lot's of straight, public sex. You gonna start protesting spring break too?

Yes, I would protest people having sex on a public beach. How is that even a question

 

[Frogsker30]

I would venture that some variation of the "carwash" described happens in 95% of High School and College locker rooms across the country

Happened to me in hs. just one asshole who thought he was so funny and hot shit would run around the locker room after wrestling practice swinging his dick and often standing in front of the shower room. Got kicked off the team right before his senior year state tourny because the coach came in when he was doing it. No body was sad to see him go. dude was a prick in many ways.

 

[djw004]

I gotta ask - Is "Fritz" too close to "Fitz"

I think yes. Cross him off the list. Or does that make him the perfect candidate? 10 years from now: Was it Fitz that had the hazing allegations, no was it Fritz that had the hazing?

 

[Huskersballz]

The more I read into this the more it sounds like some locker room stuff that maybe offended a few guys. They told those stories to people who had never been in a locker room before and of course the media blew it out of proportion.

When I was in college, our starting center would wait, naked, in a 3 point stance. As soon as a freshman walked through the door he'd snap it to them. If they caught the snap, he'd jump up and down clapping for them and then give them a big, naked hug. So his fatness and dick are swing around in joy because you caught the ball and then he'd give you a big hug. Lol so dumb, but fucking funny.

To us, growing up in a locker room, that was just funny. If you've never experienced locker room behavior, it seems wildly inappropriate. This is what this feels like to me.

Now if they were fingering buttholes or something, then yeah that's weird even by locker room standards.

But I think a few ex players had a vendetta. I think Northwestern has a bunch of media students that want to be able to say they took down the mean old traditional, white head coach. And you have a new president and AD at the school who know they can't win the fight with the media.

 

[Carm]

Wasn't saying I even think they should be - just stating that their justification of Fitz being where the buck stops in the football program SHOULD then trickle UPhill. The buck stops with the AD for the happenings of the athletic department. The buck stops with the president on the happenings of school organizations. Both of those leaders gave the thumbs up to a slap-on-the-wrist suspension. By their own standards they would be just as guilty as Fitzy.

That's my only point - I don't even care whether they are or not...But unless it is verified and accurate that Fitz was encouraging this behavior or pointing out guys to "run" in practice, I cannot believe this is where they ended up. They have a broken argument here.

we'll never know. Private university, the report is staying confidential. All we'll know is that some guys separately have told the school paper Fitz pointed guys out and that there is a picture of a whiteboard in the locker room allegedly show tracked names of people who were punished and which allegedly was there for the 4 years the guy who posted the picture was on the team.

We do know Fitz was HC there for 17 years and that Fitz has said publicly there was hazing when he was on the team in the 90s. I find it hard to believe he didn't know, but if it's true he did not, he shouldn't have the job. He had to have been incredibly out of touch with the team if that were true. That would be my conclusion of he worked for me. The school has a zero tolerance policy for hazing - my question as his supervisor would be to ask him what steps he took to make sure there was no hazing. He clearly didn't do anything robust - that is reason enough to fire him.

 

[dom91932]

Mandel: Fitzgerald's firing isn't the end of Northwestern's problems

Now might be an opportune moment for Northwestern as a university to hit pause and do some soul-searching.

theathletic.com

​

​

By Stewart Mandel​

---

I knew something would blow up in college football as soon as I left the country on vacation.

I would not have guessed it would be my alma mater’s football program.

Full disclosure before I continue: I have known Pat Fitzgerald since my sophomore year at Northwestern, when he was the star linebacker for Northwestern’s Cinderella 1995 Rose Bowl team, a season and story that cemented my love for college football. I’ve maintained a friendly relationship with him throughout his coaching career.

I don’t spend my Saturdays waving purple pompoms at my TV — I’m a little busy watching Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State and the many other programs I write about frequently. I’m less impartial, though, when it comes to Northwestern men’s basketball, having attended both of their recent (and only) first-round NCAA Tournament games.

I’m saddened that Fitzgerald’s 17-year run as the face of the program ended in scandal, but I agree with the decision to fire him. Whether he knew or didn’t know, he was the CEO of an organization that perpetuated disgusting, inexcusable systematic hazing, according to both a university-commissioned report and subsequent allegations and confirmations by former players and staffers. The head coach is responsible for the culture of his program, and the culture being described is horrific.

But there is much more to this story than the ouster of a long-revered coach. Something has gone terribly awry with Northwestern’s athletics department, and this latest scandal, as well as a simultaneous one involving the head baseball coach, demands some deeper reflection as to the source of the issues.

For those of us old enough to have experienced that historic ’95 season — in which the Wildcats came out of nowhere after 24 straight losing seasons to beat Notre Dame, Michigan and Penn State and finish 8-0 in the Big Ten — it was probably instinctual to view Northwestern football as the Little Engine That Could. A small private school with strict academic requirements playing in a conference with Ohio State and Michigan always felt like the farthest thing from a “sports school,” no matter how many bowl games and Big Ten division titles Fitzgerald’s program won.

In reality, Northwestern long ago made an institutional decision to participate in Big-Time Athletics. Under the leadership of sports-minded former president Morty Schapiro and renowned AD-turned-ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, It went from having the most outdated facilities in the conference to spending $110 million to renovate its dilapidated basketball arena and $270 million to build a palatial lakeside football complex, and just last year it announced plans for a brand-new $800 million football stadium to replace long-outdated Ryan Field.
High graduation rates be damned, this is how a high-level Big Ten or SEC university operates.
But that doesn’t mean it knows what it’s doing.

For example, after Phillips left in December 2020, the department initially promoted a deputy AD named Mike Polisky. He happened to be a co-defendant in a Title IX lawsuit at the time brought by a Northwestern cheerleader who claimed the school ignored her complaints of sexual harassment.
You can imagine how that went over. Amid intense backlash, Northwestern reversed course a week later, eventually hiring Tulsa’s Derrick Gragg.

Schapiro has since retired, replaced last year by Oregon’s Michael Schill, but the handling of the football scandal felt almost like a carbon copy. A private school not subject to public records requests, Northwestern quietly announced in January it had opened an investigation into hazing allegations while providing no further details. Until last Friday, when it quietly announced the investigation had “found evidence to corroborate claims made by an anonymous whistleblower regarding hazing activities and events.”

But rest assured, they had everything under control now, suspending Fitzgerald for two weeks in July — the two quietest weeks of the entire coaching calendar.
I’m continually astounded at how poorly universities manage crisis communications. Time after time after time, we see schools respond to scandals like this one by initially taking the path of least resistance, either ignorantly or obliviously failing to realize that the full story almost always comes out. And when it does, if it looks like you were trying to hide something, the public backlash will be swift and ferocious.

Which is exactly what happened here when, just 24 hours later, the anonymous whistle-blower shared specific and gory details of said hazing activities in The Daily Northwestern. In an incredibly awkward 180, Schill released a new statement acknowledging that “In determining an appropriate penalty for the head coach, I focused too much on what the report concluded he didn’t know and not enough on what he should have known.”

Since that moment, I knew Fitzgerald was toast. Yet I’m struggling to begin to picture Northwestern football without the guy who was a player or coach there for all but four years over the last three decades. In a profession full of mercenaries, the guy was so loyal to his school he turned down overtures from Michigan in 2010 and the Green Bay Packers in 2018. He ended every call, text and press conference with “Go Cats.”

But that, too, may have contributed to the problem. Time and again, we’ve seen coaches who become so entrenched that they effectively become kings of their own fortress. No one questions them. No one scrutinizes them. It’s not hard to see how such a toxic culture could have gone on undetected for years. And yet, the investigators said that “there had been significant opportunities (for the coaches) to discover and report the hazing conduct.”

If Fitzgerald or one of his staff members had proactively stamped out the disgusting behavior, he may still have his job. That it took an anonymous whistleblower to do so suggests this was not an environment where people felt comfortable asking questions.

Meanwhile, at the exact same moment the football program was imploding, we learned Sunday that Northwestern’s baseball program recently underwent its own HR investigation, which found that first-year coach Jim Foster “engaged in bullying and abusive behavior,” leading to a mass exodus of assistant coaches and players. Apparently, the school was planning to sweep that one under the rug, too. Fitzgerald is out, but as of this writing, Foster is not.
Neither is Gragg, the person overseeing what is quickly becoming the most dysfunctional Power 5 athletic department in the country.

In addition to being a Northwestern alum, I live 15 minutes from Stanford, another academic-minded program I probably follow closer than most. There, I had an amicable working relationship with the Cardinal’s own alum-turned-successful-coach David Shaw for more than a decade.
There was a time when I believed both Shaw and Fitzgerald might coach their alma maters for decades. Both were seen as untouchable. Now, in the span of eight months, they’re both gone. And the parallels are eerie.

Shaw’s tenure began to go south around the time longtime strength coach Shannon Turley was ousted in 2019 following an investigation brought on by an anonymous complaint against him. Shaw at least left on his own terms after the 2022 finale, but not before his program severely regressed on the field.
https://theathletic.com/3929164/2022/11/28/stanford-football-david-shaw/
Fitzgerald experienced the same arc, reaching the peak of the 2020 Big Ten championship game before bottoming out at 3-9 and 1-11 the past two years. I can’t help but think that the program’s twisted locker-room culture and its football futility were related.
One thing’s for certain: Both these programs might soon fall off the map completely. Their universities’ larger cultures don’t mesh with college sports’ rapid shift from old-school ivory tower amateurism to a professionalized model with NIL, an expanded Playoff and, inevitably at some point, an employer-employee construct.

Now might be an opportune moment for Northwestern as a university to hit pause and do some soul-searching. As one of 14 (soon to be 16) universities fortunate enough to be a member of the richest, most nationally visible conference in college sports, the money is only going to grow higher, and the competition is only going to grow tougher with the arrival of USC and UCLAbia.

Is Northwestern truly prepared to compete in that environment? Does the university have the right infrastructure to support such an expensive and complex endeavor?

Because what we’ve seen unfold just since late last week is a staggering clinic in arrogance, obliviousness and incompetence all wrapped into one.

 

[Toe]

Willie Fritz is still around? I remember there were some who were calling for him to be our HC back when Bo was fired...

 

[Huskerforlife]

Willie Fritz is still around? I remember there were some who were calling for him to be our HC back when Bo was fired...

Not a bad coach. Beat USC last season in the bowl game, but doubt he will go anywhere (I could be wrong), as the expectations in the AAC are not like other P5 teams. I think when Bo was fired, several coaches wanted the job but were never contacted (Mike Gundy, Chris Petersen, to name a few).

 

[Mavsker]

The more I read into this the more it sounds like some locker room stuff that maybe offended a few guys. They told those stories to people who had never been in a locker room before and of course the media blew it out of proportion.

When I was in college, our starting center would wait, naked, in a 3 point stance. As soon as a freshman walked through the door he'd snap it to them. If they caught the snap, he'd jump up and down clapping for them and then give them a big, naked hug. So his fatness and dick are swing around in joy because you caught the ball and then he'd give you a big hug. Lol so dumb, but fucking funny.

To us, growing up in a locker room, that was just funny. If you've never experienced locker room behavior, it seems wildly inappropriate. This is what this feels like to me.

I love locker room stories. Here's another.
High school football after a game. There's a stereo in the locker room playing some Taylor Swift (God only knows why), and the first line in the chorus of this song goes, "Drop everything now".

One of our linemen is straight up rocking out to this questionable song, and when the chorus comes, drop everything now, he yanks down his drawers perfectly timed on the beat of "now". Unbeknownst to him, the head coach had just walked in and witnessed the whole thing from the rear side. He just stood there perfectly still in silence for about 8 seconds wondering wtf he just saw, shook his head, sighed, and walked to his office.

 

[Bootleg11]

I love locker room stories. Here's another.
High school football after a game. There's a stereo in the locker room playing some Taylor Swift (God only knows why), and the first line in the chorus of this song goes, "Drop everything now".

One of our linemen is straight up rocking out to this questionable song, and when the chorus comes, drop everything now, he yanks down his drawers perfectly timed on the beat of "now". Unbeknownst to him, the head coach had just walked in and witnessed the whole thing from the rear side. He just stood there perfectly still in silence for about 8 seconds wondering wtf he just saw, shook his head, sighed, and walked to his office.

Lol and that's a story if told by the wrong person that could be construed as sexual harrasment.