Northwestern Fires Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald
Back in November, a former Northwestern football player emailed the senior associate athletic director of compliance. In the email, the player details the hazing that took place, especially one that involved sexualized behavior.
By January Northwestern launched an investigation into the allegations with an outside law firm called ArentFox Schiff firm led by attorney Maggie Hickey. Friday, Northwestern announced the whistleblower’s claims were largely supported but did not have evidence that the coaches knew about the hazing activities.
An executive summary was released by the school, so no names were in the summary except head coach Pat Fitzgerald and only a few details of what was found. Investigators did say coaches “had opportunities to discover and report hazing conduct.”
Friday the school announced they were suspending Fitzgerald for two weeks without pay. That story lived for a short while.
On Saturday the whistleblower went to The Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper. He detailed the hazing allegations and sexual abuse along with other former players.
After The Daily Northwestern put the story out Saturday the president of the school Michael Schiff went back on the suspension and mentioned he made an error in weighing Fitzgerald’s punishment.
Schill wrote he focused “too much on what the report concluded (Fitzgerald) didn’t know and not enough on what he should have known.”
After a couple of days, Schiff decided to break the silence on the allegations. In a letter, Schiff said, “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.”
Monday Fitzgerald held a brief staff meeting and then held a meeting with players and his family in attendance. According to reports by ESPN and team officials, the meeting was emotional and somber.
In another letter Schiff fires Fitzgerald, he wrote about how the football program in some ways is “broken” and that Fitzgerald was responsible for the culture of the football program.
Fitzgerald wrote in a statement he was surprised about the firing especially after only aggreging to the initial two-week suspension.
Fitzgerald is the most successful coach in Northwestern football in school history. He went 110-101 in 17 seasons and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008.
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