Should be a very, very attractive job. Hard work of getting the football stadium to groundbreaking is done, new AD will have no association/baggage with the pre-Fitz firing era, football has already shown ability to rebound, MBB is in its best streak in history, and women’s sports are excelling. NU is still a charter member of the most powerful super conference with the most lucrative media share $.
Derrick Gragg leaves role as AD for VP position still at Northwestern
- Thread starter mshelton33
- Start date
I think he did play a meaningful role in generating support from certain Evanston communities. I suspect the timing of his transition occurring not too long after the approval of the stadium project is an indicator.
Fitz is responsible for what happened on his team. We don’t know what happened.
WR references playing on the lakefront actually originated with Pat Fitzgerald:
How Northwestern's lakefront stadium went from a dream to reality
A behind-the-scenes look at how the Wildcats' new, temporary football home came to be.
Because he also sucks at fundraising.
There's a > 0 chance that he took the advice of his AD on the "two week suspension announced over a holiday". Not making excuses but I could see him trusting his subordinate and going with that recommendation. Instead of the proper course - having Fitzgerald arrested
I’m surprised you didn’t say he will be in charge of all the concerts.
We all know. Gragg had no plan. His plan was so bad he floated playing in Green Bay.
Schill entrusted Gragg to make the call, and Gragg’s call was to bury the news on a Friday afternoon and leave town. Schill made the firing call because Gragg was negligent (and difficult to reach overseas, lololololololololol what a dolt).
I am 99.5% sure that Gragg will have a desk and a wide open outlook calendar. Nobody intends to listen to him. He will not have deadlines or goals or really an expectation of accomplishment. It’s been reported that he will report to Schill, which means zero accountability to the athletic department. He will meet with Schill for a half-hour on Friday mornings.
He’ll be well paid but his position is a sinecure. (It’s a good word, usually applicable to mob guys and executive offspring whose names are on the building! Again, thanks @FeralFelidae.)
I imagine that part of Gragg’s job will be casting a wide net for creative solutions to modern and novel college sports problems. Might I suggest he expense a subscription to The Rock?
Fitz was the face of the university and arguably the school’s most beloved alum. There is no power conference school that is going to fire a longtime HC of the football team with out input from the president. If Schill did not have any input, he just be fired for dereliction of duty.
Correct, utter nonsense!
There is zero percent chance that any of the events that occurred in the Fitz debacle were done without Schill's, Gragg's and a whole bevy of attorneys involvement - including the timing of the announcement concurrent with Gragg's vacation. The buck, however, stopped at Schill's desk.
I suspect there have been months of discussions since he finished his primary task to get the stadium through the City Council and, finally, Gragg just refused to depart. So they did the lateral move to provide him with a glide path while they identify someone with the potential to figure out how NU remains relevant in the new era.
He gets to sit in the meeting and be ignored. Nothing else to do but collect a paycheck.
I like that Gragg doesn’t have the pride to resign. It is a good check, after all.
Gragg is basically just being allowed to fulfill the nominal terms of his contract. Those terms likely (my assumptions of course) stipulate that he has to have an athletics VP equivalent title and duties.
As @NUCat320 said, this is just about letting Gragg get to "keep" his job until his contract expires and not creating a messy firing situation.
He won't get any real say in the next AD choice; he'll just be "kept in the loop"; likely his contract stipulates that he has to be the most senior athletics figure on campus, which is why he'll be involved. He basically gets to be "AD Emeritus" until his contract expires; it's basically all just for show.
If you assume that Gragg felt the Fitzgerald situation was much ado about nothing (as a black man who played football in the SEC years ago, its likely went thru worse and heard about much worse)
He presumably felt that his advice to Schill was appropriate, that the timing around his planned trip to Europe was at his request - there was that email from Gragg to Fitz saying, almost apologetically, "Schill wants you to take a hit for this"
In other words it seems likely enough that Gragg is thinking - "I'm not leaving, Schill's the one who effed this whole thing up and if I resign it looks bad for me" (and of course he had no offers).
Not defending him as athletic director, just trying to piece things together.
I basically agree. Gragg probably had a rougher time, back when a rougher time was team-building. I think Gragg calculated that nobody would dig further. I think he passed this onto Schill. I think Schill believed his AD. (Schill confirmed he didn’t read the report until after The Daily story came out.)
I think that NU actively declined to use “of a sexual nature”, which would have prompted the digging.
Schill, Gragg, and Fitz all grossly miscalculated.
I like your thinking: Gragg knows his advice was bad, but blames Schill for taking it. This is because Gragg is the type of guy who is comfortable taking a do-nothing job because it’s much easier than having to do stuff.
Fair enough, although I doubt that Gragg thinks he gave Schill bad advice. He may think Schill grossly overreacted. The "Schill wants you to take a hit" email suggests that either Gragg disagreed with Schill, or at the very least wanted Fitzgerald to blame Schill, not him. Otherwise it would have said "This is really bad, Coach Fitzgerald... I have to suspend you and figure out how to remedy this." Of course, Gragg probably knew Fitzgerald's contract, while Schill apparently didn't.
Gragg really just needs to lay low and bide his time. Another offer will come along at some point.
Disciplining the HC of the football team who was also the most decorated football player in school history and had been the face of the program for nearly 2 decades is a decision that no AD would make/authorize without approval from the school president. Gragg is worthless but Schill takes the blame for botching the handling of this “scandal”.
Laying low? Now that’s something Gragg has mastered!
This makes me sad. I don't wish anyone ill will, but he will eff up wherever he goes. Wait - perhaps he will end up at Michigan or Bowling Green. (I actually DO wish THEM ill will)
Don't forget about the people who hired these two.
This article sums up the Gragg tenure... Hopefully others can read it.
It is pretty blunt.
www.nytimes.com
It is pretty blunt.
Northwestern AD Derrick Gragg pushed out: Sources
Gragg became ensnared in multiple controversies during his brief time as the Wildcats athletic director.
www.nytimes.com
Did not know he wrote a book. The statement about women pretty much sums this dude up. Just a total disaster of a hire.This article sums up the Gragg tenure... Hopefully others can read it.
It is pretty blunt.
Northwestern AD Derrick Gragg pushed out: Sources
Gragg became ensnared in multiple controversies during his brief time as the Wildcats athletic director.
I don't think the quote is quite so bad when read in context:
“There is nothing worse than seeing a beautiful, intelligent woman disrespect herself and those around her. All you have to do is turn on a hip-hop music video or one of the several awful reality television shows to see women degrading themselves shaking it for cameras and audiences. Music videos portray women as booty-shaking sex-kittens or materialistic gold-diggers. Many of those women simply do not seem to have a sense of self and who they really are or where they come from at all. However, regardless of what you see or hear, there are very good, upwardly mobile, smart women out there. You probably encounter them every day at school or in the community.”
