He's forgetting: no leadership at president or AD. Both will/should be fired. The AD never should have been hired in the first place.
Welcome to our new normal
- Thread starter Medill '03
- Start date
Those predicting the return of the dark ages will now have their wish. Firings, resignations, transfers and decommits. Forget about the new stadium. Good luck hiring a decent coach. Will be a miracle if Pat Ryan does not turn his back on the University.
A major suspension or firing of Fitz would have been bad if issued with the initial report. But issuing the report and then reversing everything within days is giving your program the death penalty.
I'd be shocked if the Ryan family wasn't heavily consulted on this; Pat Ryan Jr. is on the board and the executive committee and was likely involved in the discussions.
Can't say that as 100% fact, but again I would be stunned beyond anything if they weren't consulted by Schill directly before today's actions.
It's atrocious.
Was Hickey's team that did the investigation engaged and informed of any new information received since Friday?
The right thing to have done.....after releasing a redacted report and letting Hickey talk to the media....would have been to announce 1. new information has been brought forward and so the investigation will be extended; 2. Fitz's suspension will continue as long as the investigation goes forward. And then in a couple weeks after due diligence is complete, and the truth and fiction are known, determine punishment and report publicly.
I never thought Fitz was the second coming but handled this way looks terrible. And is ruinous to Fitz at the age of 48. So they better have gotten this right, which is tough to do in three days with a lot of S^^t being thrown around.
Was Hickey's team that did the investigation engaged and informed of any new information received since Friday?
The right thing to have done.....after releasing a redacted report and letting Hickey talk to the media....would have been to announce 1. new information has been brought forward and so the investigation will be extended; 2. Fitz's suspension will continue as long as the investigation goes forward. And then in a couple weeks after due diligence is complete, and the truth and fiction are known, determine punishment and report publicly.
I never thought Fitz was the second coming but handled this way looks terrible. And is ruinous to Fitz at the age of 48. So they better have gotten this right, which is tough to do in three days with a lot of S^^t being thrown around.
How could they have "gotten it right"? The best defense for the president and AD is, "Yeah, I didn't really read the report, and I saw that everyone was angry when they got some details so I completely changed course in the vain hopes that the public will accept the sacrifice of Fitz." I mean, that's the BEST defense.
Sadly I have to agree with you. We will have a plethora of transfers and decommits. Whatever team we field will have a very difficult time winning even one game.
They would have struggled if everything stayed the same! Now we're looking at something historically bad. Even if the hazing deserved to cost Fitz his job, the president and AD went out of their way to put football in a hole where I'm not sure how they recover.
That makes sense. And also means that everyone else will get fired. After all, Fitz didn't make the decision on the suspension. Surely someone knew the student would speak out to sympathetic media when he didn't get what he demanded.
The NU job would be attractive for a new upcoming coach, looking for a name for himself. Plus the $$$$ would be nice I am sure. As for Fitz having the most wins in NU history? That isn't such a great thing as his winning percentage is hovering in the low 50s, while he coached a bit more than three times longer than the average his predecessors did. Believe me Fitz can be replaced, the question is will he be replaced with a man that wants to win, and knows what it takes to win. Fitz seemed to phone it in the past several seasons. On top of that he seemed to base his assistant hires on just if he knew the guy. Very few of them seemed to pan out.
That's fair for sure; not going to speak for them but obviously we all know how Pat Ryan felt about Fitz.
As a fellow B1G West team fan, this is tough to watch. Fitz was a Brand Name in a conference with good to great coaches and that takes time to build. It was always an uphill battle with the academic standards but he found a way to win. Sure he had a couple down years but hopefully Cats fans don’t look back in a decade and realize just how good of a job he did.
IF they find a young, hungry, innovative guy to replace Fitz they might not even care to look back. The question should be who really was responsible for 2015-18? Fitz or Hankwitz? Did McCall play a role in it and all he needed was a real QB(Clayton)? A collapse of this magnitude of a program that was trending upwards is very rare, unless the program got nailed with sanctions/probation, etc. It is sad that it ended like this, but there is some real hope, if they find the new Pete Carroll, etc. NU isn't going to go anywhere with the offensive they have been running and with the loss of divisions and the addition of USC and UCLA, there wasn't going to be much to look forward to with Fitzball.
I'm guessing, right now, that Fitz will at least be awarded at least half of his contract. It has been stated that they couldn't prove he knew anything. Additionally he had an open door policy.
That is going to be a determining factor on the salary of the next coach.
That is going to be a determining factor on the salary of the next coach.
I don't really think we're limited on money to be frank; the new Big Ten TV deal just kicked in this month and it starts escalating next year (along with the expanded playoff money).
Even if we have to give Fitz around $30-35 million in buyout, that won't prevent us from offering another coach $6-8 million per year if it's somebody like Clawson or a big name like that.
Our conference distribution should be around $15-20 million larger next year.
Ok, the way this whole thing has been handled by the admin/AD has been a total clown-show, but based on the allegations put forth by numerous articles, the end result was going to happen sooner or later.
While near-term, things aren't going to be looking good on the gridiron (granted, not the most impt thing that needs to be addressed right now), longer term, this may just be the reset (and kick in the arse) that the program needed.
Fitz's downfall (both on and off the field) was his stubborn, old school ways, along with his time and time again being too slow to make necessary changes.
Too slow to fire coaches that needed firing, too slow to change calling the same play which hasn't been working, too slow to make personnel changes to take advantage of the matchups, and in this case, too slow (and stubborn) to put procedures in place in order to ensure that situations such as the alleged incidents of hazing, if not sexual abuse, wouldn't arise.
This is after previous incidents of hazing at other B1G programs, much less at NU.
Hire a young, innovative coach (who's actually has his own scheme), preferably on the offensive side of the ball, and such a coach could take the program to similar (if not higher) heights in what will be a tougher conference schedule.
Repeatedly losing in blowouts, losing to non-P5 and FCS, seeing dysfunctional Os/bad O-lines could be a thing of the past.
While near-term, things aren't going to be looking good on the gridiron (granted, not the most impt thing that needs to be addressed right now), longer term, this may just be the reset (and kick in the arse) that the program needed.
Fitz's downfall (both on and off the field) was his stubborn, old school ways, along with his time and time again being too slow to make necessary changes.
Too slow to fire coaches that needed firing, too slow to change calling the same play which hasn't been working, too slow to make personnel changes to take advantage of the matchups, and in this case, too slow (and stubborn) to put procedures in place in order to ensure that situations such as the alleged incidents of hazing, if not sexual abuse, wouldn't arise.
This is after previous incidents of hazing at other B1G programs, much less at NU.
Hire a young, innovative coach (who's actually has his own scheme), preferably on the offensive side of the ball, and such a coach could take the program to similar (if not higher) heights in what will be a tougher conference schedule.
Repeatedly losing in blowouts, losing to non-P5 and FCS, seeing dysfunctional Os/bad O-lines could be a thing of the past.
Why do you think it is but a dream? Do you really think NU would have gotten anywhere with the new arrangement in CFB with Fitzball? Why do you think we can't recruit good qbs? Academics and new shiny facilities are on the bottom of the list for the best players out there in terms of what gets them to sign a letter of intent. Hell getting laid at the recruiting functions holds more sway. No QB with NFL type ability is going to a school that has a ball control offense. The question I have is what if any compensation Fitz gets for getting canned due to lapses in ethical judgement. If there is a clause that addresses that in the contract, then the school dodged a bullet and will have $$$$ for a new HC with some imagination that hires the best assistants to help him win. Fitz's coaching tree sucks for a reason as he didn't want to be shown up.
Fitz was definitely involved in the 2-week suspension. He indicated that it was negotiated and that Schill changed the agreement without any mutual consent. And I'm sure Fitz took the 2-week suspension grudgingly.
Let’s wait to see what happens before we say our program has the death penalty.
The players have a tight bond; we’ll see what happens with the coaching staff.
I doubt the players will want to abandon the Northwestern degree and the 40 years of potential prosperity immediately.
Who is responsible? The players -- Justin Jackson, Austin Carr, Dan Vitale, Anthony Walker, and Clayton Thorson to name just a few.
In hindsight, which is always 20/20, it would have been a far better scenario for Fitz to have been sacked at the end of last season. A lot of coaches would have been interested in replacing him. In 2021 he won 3 games and said it would not happen again. It didn't. Winning 4 games in two years would have gotten the coach sacked at any Power 5 school. At Wisconsin, Paul Chryst went 9-4 in 2021 and was fired after 3 games in 2022 before he had a chance to turn things around as he had done in 2021. Now a lot of promising coaches probably don't want to touch NU with a barge pole given the way Schill and the AD mishandled things with Fitz.
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I would think that the buyout of Fitz should come out of a different pocket, Shouldn't really affect the new guy,. If he is a guy like Lewis (up and comer with HC background and now an OC) he could originally be brought in for maybe $2-3 mill for 4-5 year deal with review after 2.
They want to destroy him do he will not get hired by anyone elsa anytime soon. He is not there type of person.
There was a call with major donors that I understand ended something like 30 mins before the firing was announced. So they were informed about it. To what extent that group was "consulted" on the decision vs. just "informed" that Fitz was being fired by Schill and given a forum to voice their thoughts, I do not know. Schill seemed to frame it as his own decision in the last memo he sent out, although I can't really take anything that weasel says at face value at this point.
It is pretty incredible they had the foresight to have this call, as they should, but not the foresight to have the same call, or meeting, with the players, ahead of the firing being public. Kind of telling. One more data point as to how poor the leadership is.
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We wouldn’t need to also fire the president and AD.
It is an opportunity for a very good OC or DC to take their careers to the next level at a Power Five school, where the pressure to win immediately will be not so great. Schill and the AD are more than likely gone.
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