Per ESPN’s Pete Thamel and several other reports, Northwestern has fired head football coach Pat Fitzgerald after several scandals were revealed by the Daily Northwesten, the university’s student newspaper.
On July 7, Northwestern placed Fitzgerald on a two-week suspension based on an anonymous claim of hazing last November that launched a full investigation by the school in January.
The investigation revealed that “the complainant’s claims were largely supported by evidence gathered during the investigation, including separate and consistent first-person accounts,” per the investigation summary.
Those involved in the investigation were unable to prove that the coaching staff was aware of the incidents, but according to a story from the Daily Northwestern, “there had been significant opportunities [for coaches] to discover and report the hazing conduct.”
“I was very disappointed when I heard about the allegations of hazing on our football teams,” Fitzgerald said in a Friday statement. “We hold out student-athletes and our program to the highest standards; we will continue to work to exceed those standards moving forward.”
But according to a follow-up story, Fitzgerald displayed more awareness of the hazing incidents than he let on — and those incidents were far more troubling than originally thought. A former Northwestern football player, who asked to remain anonymous, revealed this to The Daily:
He alleges that much of the team’s hazing centered around a practice dubbed “running,” which was used to punish team members, primarily freshman, for mistakes made on the field and in practice.
If a player was selected for “running,” the player who spoke to The Daily said, they would be restrained by a group of 8-10 upperclassmen dressed in various “Purge-like” masks, who would then begin “dry-humping” the victim in a dark locker room.
“It’s a shocking experience as a freshman to see your fellow freshman teammates get ran, but then you see everybody bystanding in the locker room,” the player said. “It’s just a really abrasive and barbaric culture that has permeated throughout that program for years on end now.”
The Daily obtained images of whiteboards labeled “Runsgiving” and “Shrek’s List,” containing a list of names indicating players that the player said needed to be “ran.”
Then, on July 10, the Daily ran a story in which three former Northwestern football players revealed an environment that was packed with racism. From the article:
All three players, who played for the team in late 2000s, also corroborated some of the hazing allegations reported by The Daily on Saturday.
Ramon Diaz Jr., a Latino offensive lineman for Northwestern from 2005 to 2008, said his experience on the football team was hostile as a non-white player.
“I didn’t feel like I could be anything other than white,” Diaz told The Daily. “We never felt like we could be ourselves. We had to fit in by being white or acting white or laughing at our own people.”
Another player, who asked to remain anonymous and played through the 2009 season, said racism on the team was often blatant. He alleged head coach Pat Fitzgerald would ask Black players and coaches to cut off longer hairstyles — including dreadlocks — so that they were more in line with what Fitzgerald called the “Wildcat Way.”
The player said this phrase — along with “good, clean American fun” — was used often by coaches to reference how they wanted players to look and act.
The first anonymous player said that white players who had long hairstyles were not asked to alter their appearances.
