Northwestern’s multiple scandals are an abysmal institutional failure

Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

Northwestern athletics damaged students and destroyed itself in the pursuit of image

Pat Fitzgerald was going to coach at Northwestern forever.

He was Evanston’s favorite son, a former All-American linebacker and on the short list of greatest players to ever don the purple jersey, if not the greatest.

So what if the team had gone 4-20 in two seasons post a Covid shortened 2020, with losses to both Southern Illinois and Miami (Ohio) in consecutive weeks last season? Remember the 2020 Big Ten title game? Taking Ohio State to the brink? Remember 1995? The Bendarik awards? The Rose Bowl?

Fast forward to Monday, and all of that is dashed away. Fitzgerald was fired by Northwestern amid allegations of hazing and racism from within the football program, sparked by an initial investigation by the university that led to Fitzgerald being suspended for two weeks (we’ll get back to that later). ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg reports that Fitzgerald has hired lawyers to combat his firing, and this situation won’t be going away any time soon.

However, this situation can all be traced back to one critical focal point, the point at which Northwestern finds themself: this problem is bigger than Pat Fitzgerald. It’s an institutional failure by the university to protect the people they say they care about the most: the student-athletes.

Let’s go back to that two week suspension, shall we? Northwestern president Michael Schill announced the suspension of Fitzgerald on July 8, saying that the coach didn’t know about the hazing, but “there had been opportunities for them to discover and report the hazing conduct.”

A two-week suspension in the middle of July. Got it, you sure knocked that one out of the park.

Then, after phenomenal reporting by the Daily Northwestern detailing a much more grotesque and endemic problem within the football program, Schill came back around at damn near midnight to say that “he may have erred in weighing the appropriate sanction for coach Fitzgerald.”

So what exactly did the investigation not do, or not know, that made Schill come back around and try to cover up his own mistakes with a “my fault lmao” level message in the middle of the night? What problems are there among Northwestern athletics that the administration moved quicker to fire Fitzgerald and sweep everything under the rug than the initial investigation? Well, we’re probably not going to get to know that, because Northwestern has said that they will not be releasing the results of the investigation. “The good name of Northwestern athletics will not die,” they’ll probably say as multiple programs burn to the ground around them.

Now, Northwestern has to pay the price for their own failures to take appropriate action within the athletic program. Fitzgerald is taking legal action after saying that he and Schill agreed to the two-week suspension. In 2020, Fitzgerald signed a 10-year (!) extension, and would still be owed around $42 million despite being fired. However, they couldn’t fire him for cause because of the initial two-week suspension. Schill said in his statement on the firing that there was no new information, and he essentially just changed his mind. Schill and the program fucked around, giving Fitzgerald a bullshit slap on the wrist to try and smooth everything over, and are now going to find out the consequences of that.

This isn’t just a Northwestern football problem, no. News broke Monday of allegations of racism and an overall toxic environment within the Northwestern baseball program, under head coach Jim Foster. Inside NU’s Gavin Dorsey reported Tuesday that there were more details to this “nightmarish” season, as one player described it.

To sum up some of it, quickly:

Half the team needing therapy after the season.

16 out of 35 players transferring.

Three assistants leaving.

When Foster was confronted about it on 670 The Score, not only did he deny the allegations, he said THIS:

The football hazing scandal isn’t a bug in the system, it’s a feature. A feature within an athletic department that chooses to protect their coaches and image over the well being of the student-athletes who put their bodies on the line.

Schill made the choice to suspend Fitzgerald for two weeks at first, but then fired him after saying in a statement that there were 11 players that stepped forward during the investigation that acknowledged the hazing within the program. If that was the case beforehand, why was the suspension only two weeks? If 11 players outside of the initial player who sent in the allegation acknowledged this endemic problem, a slap on the wrist in the middle of July is all you can do to help them?

The game was clear as soon as the first suspension was announced. Northwestern was going to send Fitzgerald away for two weeks in the summer, say they were doing “hazing prevention training,” then sweep this all under the rug before they could go and attempt to play football. You couldn’t levy a big suspension on Fitz! He’s the golden boy! The promised one who would lead the Wildcats to … maybe a .500 record every few years? But despite the lack of on-field success, the culture was always going to mean something. “Good, clean, American fun,” plastered on everything inside the halls of the $270 million Ryan Fieldhouse, a beacon over Lake Michigan that would be pure and pristine, like the Northwestern program.

So much for that.

Northwestern athletics tried to protect their image over their own athletes, keeping up a facade to cover the rotten underbelly of the athletic department. Before I go any further, let me be clear. AD Derrick Gragg was hired in 2021 after Jim Phillips (who was very oddly gone without many questions being thrown at him) left for the ACC commissioner job, and president Michael Schill was hired last September, so the problems within the football program predate them. However, the baseball team’s problems? A cheerleading team that faced allegations of harassment and racism? That’s on their hands, and a symbol of a problem much larger than any one scandal.

This problem is larger than Northwestern football. It’s larger than Northwestern baseball and cheerleading. It’s a problem within the university, protecting their self-image and reputation over doing the right thing, and the leaders at the institution have nobody to blame but themselves.