Eventually Getting It Right

I give Northwestern President Michael Schill a lot of credit.  Not only did he do what he had to by firing football coach Pat Fitzgerald, he admitted that he made a mistake by originally only suspending him.  I also admire the fact that came out and said, point blank, that this was his decision.  No throwing the AD under the bus.  It was Schill and Schill alone who let Fitzgerald go.  Which was the only move he could make in the situation.

A huge amount of credit also has to go to the intrepid student journalists at The Daily Northwestern.  They knew how damning this story could be, yet they pressed on.  That's what good journalists do.  And Northwestern has one of the best journalism programs in the country (if not THE best).  And if not for their reporting, who's to say the details even come out?  Let alone to the painstaking degree they did.  It's not Woodward & Bernstein taking down Nixon.  But without the diligence of the reporters at The Daily Northwestern, Pat Fitzgerald is almost certainly still the Wildcats' football coach.

Those details are bad.  There's no way to sugarcoat it.  The culture of hazing and racist behavior within the Northwestern football program was completely unacceptable and needed to change.  And the only way that was gonna happen was with new leadership.

If this were an NCAA-related matter, Fitzgerald's culpability would be undisputed.  The NCAA is very clear about that.  Anything that happens within a program is the responsibility of the head coach.  If an assistant commits a violation, the head coach is equally at fault, whether they know about it or not.  Ignorance can't and shouldn't be an excuse.

For Fitzgerald, ignorance definitely was bliss.  He allegedly didn't know what was going on.  For Schill, that was enough to warrant just a two-week, unpaid suspension.  However, Schill admitted his error of focusing too much on what Fitzgerald didn't know and not enough on what he should've known.  That's the key distinction.  Because Fitzgerald should've known.  Period.

It's like the Houston Astros' sign-stealing scandal.  Alex Cora and Carlos Beltran were evidently the ringleaders.  Manager A.J. Hinch and GM Jeff Luhnow both knew nothing about it and, if they had, would've put a stop to it.  But, because they didn't know, they didn't stop it.  And it was their responsibility to know.  That's why Hinch and Luhnow were both rightly fired as a result.

After Schill suspended Fitzgerald on Friday, he was inundated with calls and emails.  That wasn't what changed his mind, though.  What changed his mind was meeting with the student in question himself, as well as his family.  It was then that he realized the severity of the hazing and how "broken" the football program was.  And that, ultimately, falls on the head coach.

And, while the report after Northwestern's six-month investigation, cleared Fitzgerald of any wrongdoing, I find it hard to believe that he didn't know what was going on.  The report said he didn't, but, c'mon!  They didn't find "sufficient evidence" that the coaching staff was aware of the ongoing hazing, but also said there were "significant opportunities" to find out about it.  However, they also contradicted themselves by acknowledging the hazing was widespread and not a secret.  So, if it wasn't a secret within the program, how could the head coach possibly not know about it?  Especially since multiple accounts corroborated each other.

There really are three possibilities here, none of which is acceptable.  The first is probably the worst.  Fitzgerald knew about the hazing and not only didn't do anything to stop it, he actually condoned it.  The second is that he was employing a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" strategy, where he knew about it, but was playing dumb.  The third is that he simply didn't care enough to find out.  The "ignorance is bliss" approach.

Personally, I think it was scenario one.  One of the Daily Northwestern articles suggested Fitzgerald not only knew about the hazing, he encouraged it by clapping his hands above the head of a player (usually a freshman) who had made a mistake in practice, signaling the upperclassmen who should be a target.  There were also some pretty serious racial allegations, with one former player pointing out that almost the entire offense was white and almost the entire defense was black, which may or may not have been intentional.

What makes this so much worse is that Fitzgerald has been at Northwestern for 26 years, first as a player, then an assistant, and since 2006 as head coach.  Which leads you to wonder how long this has actually been going on.  And how much longer it would've continued had the former player not come forward.  If it dates all the way back to his playing days in the late 90s, that's an even bigger institutional problem.  In which case, the culture change was long overdue.

Of course, it's also possible that it was simply being overlooked because Northwestern was winning.  Fitzgerald went 110-101 in 17 seasons and led the Wildcats to a pair of division titles.  They played in a bowl every year from 2008-12, then again from 2015-18, with a Citrus Bowl appearance in the 2020 season.  Northwestern has won four straight bowl games and five of its last six bowls, after having a grand total of one bowl win before 2012.

Predictably, Fitzgerald has retained council in hopes of recouping some of the nearly $40 million remaining on the 10-year contract he signed with the school in 2021.  Fitzgerald was fired for cause.  No one is disputing that.  Where he and Northwestern disagree, though, is whether the school was allowed to change the punishment after he accepted the two-week unpaid suspension.  Fitzgerald also claims they violated an oral contract, which is binding in Illinois.

My guess is there'll be some sort of settlement.  What's clear, though, is that there's no way Pat Fitzgerald could've returned from that suspension and gone about his business as Northwestern's football coach as if nothing happened.  Because something did happen.  Repeatedly.  And the university's integrity was at stake.  They had no choice.