In the end, Pat Fitzgerald had nowhere to hide.
The veteran football coach with the 10-year contract disappeared after Northwestern imposed a laughable two-week, unpaid suspension Friday for the hazing scandal that occurred under his watch. A statement was issued under his direction after the suspension began, and that was the end of the story.
In a couple of weeks he would be back on the job preparing for the Sept. 3 season opener at Rutgers, yelling “Go Cats!” to anyone who would listen.
The attention of sports fans in the middle of summer would quickly wane, and the hazing incident surely would become a blip on a long, distinguished resume. Or so he figured.
Fitzgerald remained underground the next day after the whistleblower, a former player, revealed disturbing details to The Daily Northwestern of players allegedly being forced into sexualized situations as punishment for on-field mistakes. Photos the student paper obtained of whiteboards listing the names of players singled out for abuse seemed to be a smoking gun of sorts.
But a public letter of support from the “entire” football team surely would make things better. The word “ENTIRE” was capitalized, just in case it wasn’t clear that everyone supported “Fitz.”
That surely would be the end, right?
It was not, and Fitzgerald continued to stay silent after Northwestern President Michael Schill changed his tune and admitted he “erred” in his initial sanction. Schill posted a late-night letter to the community on the university website to acknowledge his mistake, knowing everyone was surfing the web for NU news on a midsummer Saturday night.
Still, nothing from Fitz. Requests for comment from the Tribune were denied. Fitzgerald was laying low. He could wait this one out, and maybe it would all blow over.
It did not, of course, and only got worse as more players confirmed the hazing allegations. Finally, on Monday afternoon, Schill did what he could’ve done three days earlier.
Fitzgerald was relieved of his position, ending a crisis the way it had to end. In another letter to the “community,” Schill said the investigation revealed that 11 current or former players acknowledged the ongoing hazing, with more coming out to the media after the whistleblower opened the door with his Daily Northwestern interview.
Among the many questions left unanswered was why Schill delivered such a weak suspension in the first place if the investigation revealed 11 players alleging acts that included “forced participation, nudity and sexualized acts of a degrading nature.”
How many players had to confirm the hazing to warrant more than a two-week suspension during the sleepy summer period before preseason practice starts? We know now it was at least higher than 11.
Schill wrote that “while some student-athletes believed the hazing was in jest and not harmful, others viewed it as causing significant harm with long-term consequences.” How many players really believed that being forced to rub up naked against another naked person for the enjoyment of others was “in jest.” And how many are still on the team?
Schill went on to say what a “tremendous impact” Fitzgerald had on the university, “well beyond the football field.” As for his decision, he said it was his and his alone and cited an “obligation — in fact a responsibility — to live by our values, even when it means making difficult and painful decisions such as this one.”
What’s so painful about firing a coach who ran a program that practiced systematic acts of degradation for the amusement of a few sick individuals? Whether he knew or not, it was his program.
[ [Don’t miss] Timeline: Pat Fitzgerald’s Northwestern football career ]
If Schill was aware of the acts cited in the report, how could he possibly rationalize such a weak initial sanction? Did he also think it would just blow over in a few days?
This day will go down in Northwestern history as one that turned the football program on its ear. Usually when the Wildcats have a winning season — as they did in nine of Fitzgerald’s 17 seasons — they’re cast as the plucky underdog school overcoming all odds. They were like the pre-2016 World Series Cubs. Lovable losers with higher IQs.
Now Northwestern will be known as just another big-time football program that disgraced itself with vile behavior from its student-athletes and a coaching staff that either knew or had its head buried in the sand.
We don’t know the names of the players who forced their teammates to participate in the sexualized acts and probably never will. But it will be awfully hard for the average college football fan to root for Northwestern knowing some of those players likely remain on the team.
It could be the “ENTIRE” team for all we know. The players who supported Fitzgerald in the letter and called the allegations “exaggerated and twisted” would not commit to signing their names. The current player who supported Fitzgerald in an ESPN.com interview chose to remain anonymous.
Now that Fitzgerald is gone, maybe it’s time to look into whether Schill is the right guy to lead the university forward after a scandal that will have long-term ramifications. Does anyone trust him to make the right call on a replacement?
After the firing, snippets of Schill’s “message to the community” were shown repeatedly on the crawl at the bottom of the screen on Big Ten Network, which was airing a rerun of a wrestling match between Michigan State and Indiana.
Northwestern’s problem is also a Big Ten problem, though it was perhaps asking too much for its network to break into a rerun of a wrestling match and have its army of analysts explain what just happened to one of its best-known coaches.
Oh, well. It’s summer. They’ll get around to it by the opener.
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Winning college football coaches are often lionized in their communities and seen as do-gooders who can do no wrong. Fitzgerald certainly had that kind of sterling reputation in Evanston, even with a modest 110-101 record that wouldn’t have been tolerated at a traditional football power like Ohio State or Michigan.
Taking out the pandemic-year anomaly in 2020, when the Wildcats advanced to the Big Ten championship game for the second time in three years, they went a combined 7-29 over the last four seasons, including 1-11 last year. It’s not a good trend as the conference readies to expand with USC and UCLA.
When a 31-year-old Fitzgerald replaced his mentor, Randy Walker, after Walker suffered a fatal heart attack in 2006, the nation’s youngest head coach got some advice from Penn State coach Joe Paterno.
“Pat’s bright and has all the ingredients,” Paterno said in a Tribune interview. “But he has lost his mentor. That’s a tough job and he wants to hold up the tradition. Only thing I told him: ‘Hey, on your mirror, write, “I’m the boss.”’ You’re going to have to hurt some people’s feelings. You have to have confidence you’re going to do all right. And we all make mistakes. Hang in there and have some fun doing it.”
The boss of a football program is responsible for everything that goes on under him, and a good reputation doesn’t make anyone infallible.
Legacies are a funny thing. They can last forever, or they can change in a nanosecond.
Like Paterno, Fitzgerald discovered that the hard way.
