I can't follow a sport where Kirby Smart has a job and Pat Fitzgerald doesn't.
This is just sickening.
This is just sickening.
I'm done with NU and College Football
- Thread starter rwesley264
- Start date
I take it your parents never taught you that two wrongs don't make a right. I mean, seriously, should football coaches' deplorable conduct be graded on a curve?
We will be fine, who cares about Kirby Smart.
The powers that be want a decent return on their investment with regards to the football program, The hazing allegations gave them an opening to get rid of the main obstacle to possibly making NU a real football program in the future. Running a ball control offense when you had a stellar defensive scheme and players and not very good offensive players made some sense, but what happened when Hankwitz stepped down? Things went south in spectacular fashion. It is painfully obvious that Fitz isn't that great of a recruiter, and his offensive philosophy belongs in the 1970's/80's. What QB or WR recruiting studs would want to play on that kind of scheme today? Fitz had a long run at NU, alot of it was very fun, but the program under his watch has turned into crap, and he has been exposed as not being all that. As I have said time and time again as of late, NU needs an innovative coach, that has a system that is from the 21st century and goes after the best talent out there in terms of assistant coaches and coordinators. I can't honestly say that Fitz ever fit that bill.
Maybe these leaders had that kind of devious motivation. But the whole idea of suspending him for two weeks and then reversing course makes that scenario unlikely. I don't even know who's "investing" or the "powers that be" unless we're saying Pat Ryan got sick of watching terrible QBs throw to slow WRs and didn't see Fitz changing. Even then, why not just fired him with a damning report? The simpler explanation is that no one at NU has a clue.
I fear that it will be a long time before we are fine.
Agreed.
As I always say the truth is some where between, so Fitz could've done a better job, the staff could've done a better job. I'm frustrated that no one appears to have attempted to elevate this up the "chain of command" first.
Fitz is a man of outstanding character (I've meet him once). His departure will most assuredly create an exodus in the program unless by some miracle another Fitz becomes available (Ayeni/Kafka?). I know I may crazy, but I really thought the Cats might surprise some people (6 - 7 wins?) this year since they generally seem to do better when everyone counts them out. But given the recent events, I can't see why the players would even fight. I feel sorry for transfers Bryant, Henning, etc.
I'm feeling really pessimistic right now but this doesn't feel like this this team will be good in quite a while. Since there is some much money in football when will the Big Ten coming knocking to buy the Cats out?
Fitz is a man of outstanding character (I've meet him once). His departure will most assuredly create an exodus in the program unless by some miracle another Fitz becomes available (Ayeni/Kafka?). I know I may crazy, but I really thought the Cats might surprise some people (6 - 7 wins?) this year since they generally seem to do better when everyone counts them out. But given the recent events, I can't see why the players would even fight. I feel sorry for transfers Bryant, Henning, etc.
I'm feeling really pessimistic right now but this doesn't feel like this this team will be good in quite a while. Since there is some much money in football when will the Big Ten coming knocking to buy the Cats out?
Oh, yeah…. sure. That’s the reason 🙄 Meanwhile blowing up any chance of a new stadium.
There were multiple donors to the new training facility. They didn't fork over that kind of $$$$$$$$$ for the program to revert back to the 70's. Garbage like this usually is about money somehow. Like you said a two week suspension one day, then they decide to can him just after the suspension is announced? Either there is some damning evidence that is rather embarrassing to the university and they are laying all the blame on Fitz or they are blowing it up to give cover so they can look for his replacement. All idle speculation on my part for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are folks that see Fitz as a liability for the program. Like I have stated before, in all my years of watching CFB, I have never seen a program do such a complete 180 without being on probation, etc. Fitz seemed to phone it in.
Makes sense for Wisky and Iowa as they usually have decent to good O lines, not so much when the O-line you put out season after season is putrid,
Dude, this isn’t a conspiracy — this is Northwestern. The vast majority of the NU community doesn’t give a rat’s ass about sports. There is no admin-level cabal choosing to drag the school’s name through the mud for a better football program. This is entirely about an elite academic institution not wanting to appear to condone what amounts to, in the eyes of non-sports fans (which, again, make up the vast majority of not just our community, but the one we move in institutionally) as rampant sexual assault. It’s that simple.
If the AD had come out with a 6-month or year-long ban, this would be over and done with. Once we looked soft on hazing and what is seen by many as SA, they dropped the hammer.
There's the big irony in all of this.
A steep looking punishment at first would have basically prevented this whole thing from spiraling out of control. The 2 week slap on the wrist doomed everyone.
I agree with this, especially as we've learned that one of the whistleblowers wanted Fitz fired. So, the question is, how could anyone have thought two weeks would suffice? There's simply no excuse, and anyone involved in that decision will need to follow Fitz out the door.
It's finished. Fitzgerald was an extension of the Barnett era. RIP Expect Victory. 1992-2023. From here on out, turnstile head coaches are taking the purple to perdition. Saturday afternoons and discretionary money best diverted elsewhere.
Not to mention, it's not clear that NU could compete in the pay-to-play era anyway.
That is the billion dollar question. NU reminds me of "that guy" in the equity partnership. You know the one: highly esteemed and credentialed, fun to be around, one of the founders who mentors the newcomers. But never a rain maker, his few clients are retiring, and, recently, bizarre and erratic mood swings are beginning to alarm the office staff.
Legacy status allows NU to continue as cannon fodder for now, but the program won't pull its weight and will be left behind two or three realignments from now. Only high PPP retains and attracts rainmakers and NU pulls down the average.
I am done too. I am sure all other coaches are shaking their heads, but they also just penciled NU as a win in their books and are pleased at that. Even when we had the losing seasons, they knew the players were well taught and fought with everything they had. I understand the whistle blower had a vendetta also bothers me (an ex-coach?). Well, the whistleblower won. But I can’t watch, attend, or donate the program (and I donated a lot of money that I now regret). Until the University proves to me they are serious again about football (a head coach that actually will go to bowl games), I will stop those activities. Without real provable public information, I can’t trust our university to do the right thing. I think they reacted to the public and politics have proven that the public forgets things, so I can see suspension for a season (at most). He would have learned his lesson. I think money and a losing season had a lot to do with this. But I was there for the entire losing Streak and as a football fan, I cannot go back. I stayed away until the Rose Bowl and you won’t see me support the program until they go back. Maybe Pat Ryan withdrew his support and that would be big enough for the University (he must at least have known about the decision before they released it because he was giving to the university as well as the football program). But I hate to be Rice University again. I can’t do that anymore. I’m too old to change my ways and I really do think this occurs at a lot of programs. The University has loss my trust. Pat will end up at another program. He is too good (despite what others say on this board). FloridaAlum just started rolling in his grave.
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Cat in the Cradle and Jaguar88, you really don’t understand what it took to get the program to this level and now what it would take to get it back. I will be dead before that time arrives, but maybe old dead contributors are okay with you. But it is not the prime of your life people that give money and ”those guys” are who show up for the expensive season tickets. If you dont believe that, you are really not a fan of NU football, you did not see the losing streak and know the mood around campus, and you really are dreaming if you think any coach that would take us to a bowl game would even want an interview for the job. Well, i Really don’t know the last part for 5 years but I predict a lot of NIL transfer leaving the program, some recruits decommitting and plenty of people not renewing tickets. The University did not do any favors to the program unless it was a Paterno-like event and I bet his former players and current players would not have stand for that. But it is a University that ban any hazing event and no matter how small, they felt politically correct to make their decision. With a new AD, losing seasons, a “prestiges“ University tag, and a review board made up of non-football fans (who think people donate because of the prestige only or are who have their nose so far up in to air the international space station have to maneuver around it). I am glad Fitz is fighting it because by what they said, people will assume the worse. After meeting several Teams in person and Fitz over the years, I don’t. They need to prove it to me and to a lot of the alums. Maybe not you or others who wanted him gone, but to so many others. If they were going to be coy, they would have let him resign but I think it is very much like our University to want to set an example; an example of our snootiness.
Obviously I am pissed and should probably wait to hear everything but I am steaming mad and the University will not say anything because of a pending lawsuit.
Obviously I am pissed and should probably wait to hear everything but I am steaming mad and the University will not say anything because of a pending lawsuit.
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Money, money, money. I was losing interest in P5 college ball well before this incident and had dropped off the pay board. This is probably the final nail in the coffin for me. What the present climate of big-time college football has to do with the actual mission of a university is beyond me at this point. If you think NU was going to be competitive in an era of NIL and transfer portal, you're probably delusional. Even the D2 league I follow is largely separating into haves and have-nots as the less successful teams are raided for players by the top dogs after each season.
Now that the Supreme Court has squashed affirmative action, I wonder how long it will be before someone sues a university for lowering its academic admission standards for athletes. It's hard to imagine a more obvious case of affirmative action.
Personally, I'd love to see the top few P5 programs form some sort of super league and beat the crap out of each other. The whining of whichever of those fans bases finish on the bottom would be music to my ears.
Now that the Supreme Court has squashed affirmative action, I wonder how long it will be before someone sues a university for lowering its academic admission standards for athletes. It's hard to imagine a more obvious case of affirmative action.
Personally, I'd love to see the top few P5 programs form some sort of super league and beat the crap out of each other. The whining of whichever of those fans bases finish on the bottom would be music to my ears.
Not sure how my handle got mentioned in your post. I never wanted anyone gone, Inside NU kicked me off for not being PC enough, and I know this is the end of NU football. I'm the one who sat in empty bleachers as a kid during the Dark Ages. I have a lot of souvenir footballs; pops and I were the only targets in the section the cheerleaders could aim for. I ran on the fake turf and crumbling corridors of Dyche Stadium at Wildcat Summer Camp for kids. The old turf probably contained enough material to offend the sensibilities of a Nevada toxic waste disposal site, while Dyche would have made a great set for filming the post-apocalyptic human hideout scenes in the Terminator series. I've eaten enough Mustard Last Stand hotdogs to ensure my remains are preserved until the next millennium.
And, then, there was that year. 1995. I bought tickets for pops and we flew out for the USC game on New Years' Day. I didn't even attend NU, too close to home, but the Evanstonian in me has always loved the school and football program as much as an enrollee.
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I totally disagree with your first statement. If that is true, we would not have a National Championship women's lacrosse team, a successful women's softball team, a men's basketball program that now appears very strong, a championship field hockey team, and many others. The idea that NU does not support sports is just nuts.
That post, and memories of 1995 are something I will happily give a hearty Go Cats! to. Well said.
PS Musso was down
Majority of our sports are run well.
This fiasco in the baseball program and football program are 2 separate things.
Hindsight being 20/20, if things don't turn around in say 5-10 years, maybe NU would be better off leaving the B1G like Univ of Chicago did back in the day. NU is an elite university and the students aren't that into sports it seems.
You disagree with my assertion that most of our student body and alumni base doesn’t really care about sports? I suppose that’s your right, but it flies contrary to everything I’ve experienced in my 25 years associated with the university. We‘ve certainly had some success, but we’re far from a “sports school.”
All of this is so overly sensationalized. Let’s disband the football program and leave the big ten because we had to fire a football coach who was 4-20 the last two seasons.
I didn't want him gone per say, but if this stuff rings true, do you really want him around? He seems to have been phoning it in as of late in terms of coaching though. As for my rant about maybe ending up like the University of Chicago disbanding football or just going to a lower tier conference, I think that is the worst case scenario.
People in glass houses…
Imagine went on your uncle’s locker room. Wasn’t there some controversy in his career?? 🤔
Just to extend the positivity, we might not have to worry about football at all. It's a dangerous sport - CTE is a thing and one has to wonder if the sport itself is defendable in the long term. Have to wonder if that's affected Kain Colter based on some of the news I've seen about his personal struggles. Will the Taj be seen in hindsight as "peak facility competition"? I don't even know what to call it anymore....
All you need is a coach with vision that has some backing with the alumni. I mean how did Barnett get the program going? Barnett was a very good coach, that had a vision and hired in assistants that were on board with the vision that complemented him. If my uncle could turn around an Iowa State program that was just as bad as the Wildcats of the 70's, why can't NU hire a real go getter HC that has some real vision for the program. Fitzgerald wasn't all that. I mean 17 seasons with no titles? I mean where is the next Saban, Carroll, etc? He is out there waiting for someone to take a chance with him. I say let's go for it and have a real search for him. Set up a program where really good players can make some really good plays and amass a nice stat line and those 4 star recruits will come on board. Academic reputation and even facilities are low on the reasons highly ranked recruits pick the school they go to. Fitz is gone, he held the program down with his lack of a coherent offensive philosophy and putting the onus on the D most of the time.
I too wonder and worry about Kain. He took some nasty hits in college so CTE may be a factor.
I hope he’s doing better, getting help, and staying our of trouble.
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