Northwestern fires Pat Fitzgerald as hazing, racism allegations mount
Northwestern fired longtime football head coach Pat Fitzgerald on Monday night following a new round of accusations describing a “culture of enabling racism,” after new details surrounding hazing allegations came to light over the weekend.
The school made the news official in a lengthy statement from university president Michael Schill.
“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,” Schill said in the statement. “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.”
The school suspended Fitzgerald for two weeks on Friday following a months-long investigation that “largely supported” hazing claims.
The investigation, led by attorney Maggie Hickey of the ArentFox Schiff LLP firm, began in January after a hazing complaint was filed last November.
Schill, in his first year at Northwestern, called the original decision to only suspend Fitzgerald and now fire him “mine and mine alone.”
While the university president didn’t go into specific details about what the investigation found, he did say that the hazing included “forced participation, nudity and sexualized acts of a degrading nature, in clear violation of Northwestern policies and values.”
The comments appeared to confirm some of the details published in a report from The Daily Northwestern, the school’s student newspaper, citing an anonymous player who alleged some of the hazing involved coerced sexual acts and that Fitzgerald may have known about the hazing.
The reporting detailed a hazing ritual called “running,” which involved a player being restrained by a group of 8-10 upperclassmen dressed in masks who would then dry hump the victim in a dark locker room.
Schill’s statement said that the investigation found that people inside the program knew about the hazing, but Fitzgerald wasn’t one of them.
Still, Schill felt that with the number of people that knew what was going on it gave Fitzgerald plenty of time to learn the extent of the hazing that was occurring.
“Either way, the culture in Northwestern Football, while incredible in some ways, was broken in others,” Schill said.
He also said that he was only learning many of the details now of the six-month independent investigation and that he had spoken with the parents and the student who made the complaint.
“While some student-athletes believed the hazing was in jest and not harmful, others viewed it as causing significant harm with long-term consequences,” Schill said.
Fitzgerald released a statement late Monday night, per ESPN, reiterating he had “no knowledge whatsoever of any form of hazing” within the football program and that he has hired legal counsel to take the steps needed to protect his rights.
He said he was caught off-guard by his firing, considering he and Northwestern came to a “mutual agreement regarding the appropriate resolution,” which was a two-week suspension, after the university’s investigation.
“Therefore, I was surprised when I learned that the president of Northwestern unilaterally revoked our agreement without any prior notification and subsequently terminated my employment,” Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald, Northwestern’s coach since 2006 and one of the best players in program history, went 110-101 and had been coming off a 1-11 season in 2022, the Wildcats’ worst since the program went winless in 1989.
There was no mention in Schill’s statement of the latest reporting by The Daily Northwestern which quoted three former players who detailed instances of racism within the program. Former offensive lineman Ramon Diaz Jr. said he developed post-traumatic stress syndrome from his time playing at Northwestern.
Monday’s report detailed numerous instances of alleged racism as well as three former players confirming parts of previous reporting surrounding hazing allegations inside the football program.
Diaz, who was an offensive lineman from 2005 to 2008 and became a clinical therapist, described another instance when he was forced to shave the phrase “Cinco de Mayo” into his hair as part of a freshman tradition. He also heard a coach talk down to a black player about the hat he was wearing, saying that he “wasn’t in the hood anymore” while also telling that player he had a “gangster walk.”
He even said that he heard another Northwestern player tell a black teammate to show him “how monkeys act.”
“The fact that I’m still going to a therapist and talking about these things after more than 10 years is indicative of the mental health state I was left in,” Diaz said. “I didn’t even watch a football game again for almost five years after I left Northwestern. It was that negative of an experience for me that I didn’t want anything to do with the sport.”
After he was initially suspended for two weeks on Friday, Fitzgerald released a statement saying he was “disappointed” to learn of the hazing allegations and said he was not “aware” of the alleged activities.
The school said that Combe Family Vice President for Athletics & Recreation Derrick Gragg will name new leadership for the football team in the days ahead.
What isn’t known is the reaction from the players on the team, who wrote a letter to the Northwestern community over the weekend saying “the recent allegations brought forth are exaggerated and twisted.”
The letter had been signed by “the ENTIRE Northwestern Football Team.”
