WildcatReport - Explosive hazing allegations call Fitz, NU administration into question
A detailed report of hazing allegations could mean the end of head coach Pat Fitzgerald's tenure.
northwestern.rivals.com
My column: Explosive hazing allegations call Fitz, NU administration into question
- Thread starter lou v
- Start date
northwestern.rivals.com
We now have a player, a second player and a staff member that corroborated the "running" and the staff member says Fitz had to know.
Can we spare ourselves further humiliation and cancel the damn season. What's the point?
Can we spare ourselves further humiliation and cancel the damn season. What's the point?
If Gragg had any guts Fitzgerald would be fired and the season would be canceled voluntarily.
I've been a Gragg apologist for a couple of years now. Guess I was wrong. The new Shill oops Schill is no better
Not from the team’s Twitter account tho, right?
If there were lies and exaggerations, the actual truth would be interesting to hear.
Is ‘running’ a thing? What does it mean?
Do only walk-ons get sent through the car wash?
If the statement is reflective of everyone, everyone’s name should be on it.
How can this be? They say themselves that there was a 6 month investigation where it was clear THAT IT DID HAPPEN. Just that they couldn't pin it on anyone. But she said IT DID HAPPEN
Something is amiss
The investigation was done by a reputable law firm. They spoke to everyone.
The daily writes a story.
If the law firm is accurate the situation is over with.
If the daily story is in anyway different or has new information that the lawyers did now. Fitz won’t coach again.
This doesn’t smell right.
The investigation was done by a reputable law firm. They spoke to everyone.
The daily writes a story.
If the law firm is accurate the situation is over with.
If the daily story is in anyway different or has new information that the lawyers did now. Fitz won’t coach again.
This doesn’t smell right.
A reputable law firm hired by Northwestern to investigate on behalf of Northwestern that did in fact said that hazing did occur. What doesn’t smell right is the soft selling and the slap on the wrist for a major loss of control of a multimillion dollar team.
I completely disagree.
If the daily story is 100% accurate the university’s reputation would be severely damaged. No place like Northwestern takes a chance and manipulates a law firm to hide or cover up facts.
Situation got far worse after the Daily report. This will not go away quickly/easily based on the allegations that are now public.
I'll say this, Fitz's continued position as HC is in a fair bit of doubt if there's still more to drop from this story.
Fitz had better have answers to all the questions he's going to face at media days if he's going to survive this.
I'll say this, Fitz's continued position as HC is in a fair bit of doubt if there's still more to drop from this story.
Fitz had better have answers to all the questions he's going to face at media days if he's going to survive this.
If Fitz was clapping during practice to support it, maybe he just thought that they were making the freshmen run some extra laps after practice.
I hope he doesn't make it to media days
Last edited:
I'll say this, the University leadership (saying this generally due to little idea of who made the calls here whether Schill or Gragg but I suspect Schill had to make the call on this) is completely boneheaded if they thought that this type of thing would go away quietly with a 2 week suspension.
When the 2005 hazing incidents happened, it was news for the entire school year; the photos were going around campus and other incidents came to light and the story was running for a while.
We have one of the best if not the best journalism school in the country; the notion that the Daily would dig into this and release all the details should have been obvious to the University leadership.
Obviously it's great that the team put out a statement backing Fitz, but that's not going to do anything to slow the frenzy of questions over this. And if there's lawsuits over this, it won't go away quickly even though they will all be settled.
Generally, victims of SEXUAL ASSAULT remain anonymous
Not in a criminal trial, I thought. Right to face your accuser and all.
The press no longer prints the name of sexual assault accusers. You are correct that the defense would want to cross examine the accuser.
What I can’t wrap my head around is the fact that NU hired a law firm to conduct an investigation. If they found credible evidence that the events in the Daily article are true, these are crimes! Evidence of sexual asshalt should be sent to the police! Yet they didn’t recommend termination for Fitz? Did the law firm provide any recommendation on fitz punishment? Something is off here.
Fitz is not going to be terminated unless another shoe drops or there's actual hard proof that he knew about these incidents before this investigation.
So far, even the Daily piece has a source suggesting that he should have known or might have known. That's not proof that he knew.
Cancel the season? Lol
Looks like players and alums are overwhelmingly supporting Fitz, regardless of Turk campaigning for students to picket outside Fitz’s house.
Has anyone besides me taken a sexual harassment course? "Knew or should have known " is widely used. It's his job to know or he's guilty.
Ok, if they didn’t have proof Fitz knew, then they wouldn’t recommend termination. But what about the evidence of sexual assault? How can this be glossed over with adding a. Observer in the locker room?
We should be careful to not take statements defending Fitz’ character as evidence that the alleged hazing did not occur. In some ways, his character is a red herring. Multiple things can be true at once. Fitz can be a decent man and upperclassmen Northwestern football players can be responsible for hazing their younger teammates.
These players are smart. They’re being very careful with their words. All of these statements speak to Fitz’ reputation as an individual. They say nothing of the running, the gatorade, the car wash, or other alleged actions that happened under his watch. The veracity of those allegations still stands uncontested. If anything, the players’ letter concedes that these events did occur, but disagree with how these events were framed in the Daily article because of the motivations of the whistleblower. Still, the investigation which the players admittedly support, found the allegations credible.
These players are smart. They’re being very careful with their words. All of these statements speak to Fitz’ reputation as an individual. They say nothing of the running, the gatorade, the car wash, or other alleged actions that happened under his watch. The veracity of those allegations still stands uncontested. If anything, the players’ letter concedes that these events did occur, but disagree with how these events were framed in the Daily article because of the motivations of the whistleblower. Still, the investigation which the players admittedly support, found the allegations credible.
So there are people (not just cripplecat) willing to go on the record to defend Fitz.
I think that's enough to at least hold off on the "fire him immediately" and "cancel the season" stuff until we learn more.
In a sense yes, but this isn't a court of law and the standards of public opinion are different. I agree that he probably should have known or found out about this; it seems almost impossible to me that no coaches knew of what was going on...; you would think *somebody* on the staff had to know if this was happening regularly after practices.
So it depends on what comes out next on these incidents. Hard to believe this is the end of the story.
I'm wondering that myself... some of this sounds like it would clearly be sexual abuse, especially the carwash and center-quarterback exchange (different from sexual assault I would note though, sexual assault would require alleged sexual penetration). I have no idea what happens next on this, and I'd assume that there may be lawsuits/settlements to come.
I still think we don't know enough yet and have to really wait and see what further details come out...
Notably nobody is going on the record to state that the abusive hazing never happened. If the hazing occurred as described, it’s irrelevant if certain former players love Fitz as a person.
First of all...just...wow.
Here's how I'm seeing things:
* The firm produced a report that we may never see that included interviews/statements by the Daily's anonymous source. So the Daily and the firm are basically working with the same information, but may choose to interpret and report it differently for obvious reasons.
* It is clear the source believes that Fitz knew something was going on. For whatever this is worth, I believe it's possible Fitz may not have known the gory details of what was happening in the showers, but if that is the case there is almost definitely willful ignorance in the most generous sense of that term. The firm could not conclude with *certainty* that he knew (i.e. he wasn't present, never discussed it), and thus, if you can't legally prove it, you legally move forward with that in mind.
* Most of us non-lawyer types are governed more by common sense, and I think even Fitz's fiercest defenders would agree the head coach of a program for nearly 20 years either has control, or he doesn't...so is it better to be an idiot or a liar?
* The existence of the "Runsgiving" whiteboard is pretty damning, but I'd love to hear a sound, logical explanation for it.
* Schill's response here is interesting. I have no reason to believe any new information has come out since he reviewed the report. So he either literally didn't bother reading the report, or he's basically getting caught with his pants down here grossly under-reacting to the report, never expecting the contents to be revealed by some junior Medill students.
Here's how I'm seeing things:
* The firm produced a report that we may never see that included interviews/statements by the Daily's anonymous source. So the Daily and the firm are basically working with the same information, but may choose to interpret and report it differently for obvious reasons.
* It is clear the source believes that Fitz knew something was going on. For whatever this is worth, I believe it's possible Fitz may not have known the gory details of what was happening in the showers, but if that is the case there is almost definitely willful ignorance in the most generous sense of that term. The firm could not conclude with *certainty* that he knew (i.e. he wasn't present, never discussed it), and thus, if you can't legally prove it, you legally move forward with that in mind.
* Most of us non-lawyer types are governed more by common sense, and I think even Fitz's fiercest defenders would agree the head coach of a program for nearly 20 years either has control, or he doesn't...so is it better to be an idiot or a liar?
* The existence of the "Runsgiving" whiteboard is pretty damning, but I'd love to hear a sound, logical explanation for it.
* Schill's response here is interesting. I have no reason to believe any new information has come out since he reviewed the report. So he either literally didn't bother reading the report, or he's basically getting caught with his pants down here grossly under-reacting to the report, never expecting the contents to be revealed by some junior Medill students.
They said this about Joe Paterno too
That’s obviously the the nearest comparison. We don’t know if there’s a Mike McQueary in this story.
Geez.
The allegations date back to 2020. Riley Lees, who is now a graduate assistant, was a player at the time.
He is in a unique position as someone who was in the locker room as a player and now has visibility into the football office as a coach.
