Northwestern hazing allegations lead to Coach Pat Fitzgerald's firing

Get the Point!

Northwestern University, one of the most highly respected private PWI's in America, holds the distinction of being one of several academic bastions like Stanford, Boston College, and Duke that, every few years or so, has a football team filled with scholars who standout in the classroom and on the gridiron.

For the last 17 years, the school's Wildcats football program has been led by former player Pat Fitzgerald (above), that was until yesterday when the coach was fired over allegations that he did nothing to curb a culture of sexualized and racial hazing in the football field house. 

Fitzgerald's firing came days after the University's investigation concluded that he was not directly aware of the nature and breadth of the sexualized hazing acts, a factor that initially led to a two week suspension for failing to properly ensure the safety and welfare of all Northwestern players.

But as details leaked from anonymous current and former players, the proverbial writing on the wall inscribed that Fitzgerald, one of the University's winningest coaches, coaching days were numbered. 

While a great many Northwestern alumni and supporters have rallied to Fitzgerald's defense, others on social media have lamented that the most egregious of the recently alleged acts—that young players who made mistakes in practices or games were tied up and "dry humped" by upperclassmen—is merely an example of "boys being boys" and not nearly as bad as the media are making it seem. 

I fully disagree...

So, way back in August of 1985, several weeks before I began my 8th grade year at FAMU High School, I decided to give up my final season of playing city league football for the Jake Gaither Park Giants to tryout for the Baby Rattlers Junior Varsity football team. By early September, most of classmates had made the team as well, one that was mostly comprised of 8th and 9th graders, with a handful of 10th graders who were assigned to get more seasoning on the JV squad before being called up to the Varsity. 

Being that FAMU High was a K-12 school, the younger boys ALWAYS looked up to, if not idolized, the older guys who were Varsity starters. Many of us considered it a privilege to scrimmage and get dragged by the same dudes whose names were in the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper for "player of the week" or other statistical honors. 

One September afternoon, after a grueling practice in the routinely stifling Florida heat, one of my class/teammates chose to take a shower after we all made it into the locker room. In all candor, I always waited to soak in the tub at my house after practice mostly because a few of the older players used to crack jokes unmercifully about the younger players' lack of physical development.

As such, when my one classmate chose to shower that afternoon, not only was he cracked on, but three upperclassmen, two in 10th grade and one in 12th,  dragged him out of the locker room...butt naked...and threw him into the hallway—where a group of girls who had just finished cheerleading and volleyball practice, respectively, were shocked by the spectacle. 

Sadly, my classmate, a humble and very quiet sort, burst into tears as he made it back into the locker room to get dressed and go home. The following day, his mother came to the school and met with Harry Jacobs, our varsity football coach who also served as the Athletics Director.

Coach Harry Jacobs, who died this past April, displayed proper ball carrying technique in a photo featured in the Tallahassee Democrat prior to a 1985 season that saw the varsity Baby Rattlers finish with a 9-2 record—while the JV finished 4-1 with our lone loss being to Godby High School.

As we filed into the locker room to dress out for practice, Coach Jacobs and Coach Bernard Kelly called a meeting and had two of the three offending players apologize before the whole team. After their apologies, as corporal punishment was still a thing back then, Coach Kelly paddled both of them—five sound licks a piece—with a long plastic paddle that the coaches kept in the football office. After the paddlings, the two varsity players spent the bulk of that practice running and crabbing up and down the steep hill adjacent to the gym until it was time to scrimmage. (Nota Bene: The third player never made it to practice because his father, upon hearing what had happened, came down and gave him a whoopin' at the school earlier in the day—and removed him from the team). 

In ‘85, I earned an orange and green “F,” this certificate, and the pleasure of avoiding being humiliated in a hazing incident…

That was my very first encounter with hazing, and the swift actions that the coaches took in that instance ensured that no physical terror was inflicted upon the younger players anymore. There were no "boys will be boys" shrug offs to be had, as both the Varsity and JV Baby Rattlers finished the year with winning seasons, while two of the three upperclassmen boys later went on to earn college scholarships and distinguish themselves greatly in life. 

Such is why I can understand how Northwestern's Coach Fitzgerald may not have known much about the sexualized hazing that his upperclassmen were inflicting upon his newer players, but as the inevitable lawsuits ensue, it will be interesting to learn whether he was decisive in doling out punishment after learning the truth, like our FAMU High coaches, or whether he took a "hear no evil, see no evil" approach?

Separate from the sexualized hazing, I am equally concerned with allegations that Coach Fitzgerald himself inculcated a climate of racism that made some Black and Latino players feel ostracized? 

According to the Daily Northwestern newspaper, one anonymous player alleges that during his tenure that ended in 2009, that "coach Pat Fitzgerald would ask Black players and coaches to cut off longer hairstyles — including dreadlocks — so that they were more in line with what Fitzgerald called the 'Wildcat Way.'”

A second player, Ramon Diaz Jr., said that during his school days from 2005 to 2008, that, “I didn’t feel like I could be anything other than white. We never felt like we could be ourselves. We had to fit in by being white or acting white or laughing at our own people.”

In 2021, four of the five Northwestern football captains were white student-athletes, which is somewhat of a rarity of sorts in major college football game that's dominated by Black student-athletes…

As to the aversion to Black hairstyles, what strikes me as curious was further reading that white players with long hair were not required to cut their hair; indeed, if the "Wildcat Way" is short cuts for everybody, so be it! But if the distinctions were made according to race, that very well could be problematic for the Fitzgerald wrongful termination legal case in time. 

As for "acting white," while unfortunate, I would be interested to learn more about whether this was an active push by the coaching staff, or a passive "feeling" that minority players had at an overwhelmingly white school where few of the non-athletic coeds are people of color? With affirmative action all but dead, it will be very interesting to see how further pronounced this issue becomes for Black athletes at academically elite PWI's in the days ahead. 

In the end analysis, it's important to note that there are ways to build camaraderie among teammates without barbarity. My father and uncles used to swear that when they played football back in the 50's and 60's, that they didn't have any water breaks, but by the time I started playing in the 80's, we had two water breaks per practice and these days, after all of the studies on heat stroke following the tragic death of Minnesota Vikings tackle Korey Stringer around the turn of the century, water breaks occur frequently during football practice sessions. 

Modern football coaches, like Florida A&M’s Willie Simmons, ensure that players stay properly hydrated during the brutal heat of Fall camp…

Similarly, while physical abuse of varying sorts was the norm among upperclassmen back in the day, most states now have laws that make it a felony for students to put their hands or other body parts on another student as part of a ritual to join some school based activity.

To be clear, I'm all for underclassmen sitting in the front of the bus, carrying equipment to and from practice, and carrying the bags of upperclassmen—those are time honored and harmless hazing traditions. But I see no value whatsoever in "dry humping" or other sexualized acts that in the end, are demeaning, cruel, and depending on the state in which it occurs, criminal!