Northwestern has fired football coach Pat Fitzgerald, sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel and Adam Rittenberg on Monday.
Fitzgerald’s firing comes in the wake of a two-week unpaid suspension that was announced by the school on Friday, following a university-commissioned investigation into hazing allegations within the program that were made by an anonymous whistleblower.
A day after announcing Fitzgerald’s suspension, the school appeared to reverse course Saturday night, with university president Michael Schill saying in a letter sent to the Northwestern community that he “may have erred in weighing the appropriate sanction” for Fitzgerald after new details emerged surrounding the hazing allegations.
“In determining an appropriate penalty for the head coach, I focused too much on what the report concluded he didn’t know and not enough on what he should have known,” Schill wrote in his letter Saturday night. “As the head coach of one of our athletics programs, coach Fitzgerald is not only responsible for what happens within the program but also must take great care to uphold our institutional commitment to the student experience. … Clearly, he failed to uphold that commitment, and I failed to sufficiently consider that failure in levying a sanction.”
Fitzgerald’s suspension was among the measures Northwestern announced after concluding the investigation, which began in January and found that one claim from an anonymous whistleblower was supported, even though player accounts varied and there was not sufficient evidence that coaches knew about the conduct. Other measures included no more preseason practices off campus in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where some of the alleged hazing occurred, and a new football locker room monitor who will not report to Fitzgerald or his staff.
Fitzgerald, an alum who has coached Northwestern since 2006, said in a statement Friday that he was very disappointed to hear about the hazing allegations and had no prior knowledge of the incidents.
“Northwestern football prides itself on producing not just athletes, but fine young men with character befitting the program and our university,” Fitzgerald said in his statement. “We hold our student-athletes and our program to the highest standards; we will continue to work to exceed those standards moving forward.”
Fitzgerald, 48, is two years into a 10-year, $57 million contract, a deal reached after he reportedly received serious interest from the NFL.