Did he suspect Pat Fitzgerald’s outcome would be this??

On Friday of last week is when the news broke. Right before the weekend, it was like 2.30, and I read the story and I'm kind of going, huh, this Northwestern thing, there's something that doesn't quite add up. We're just suspending Pat Fitzgerald, the head coach at Northwestern, for two weeks without pay in the middle of the summer, and that's fine and we're not releasing any details. Well, details did come out thanks to the student paper at Northwestern, a great journalism school to begin with, and four students exhibiting great work in the journalism.

I wish there was journalism left for them to go and enjoy. And then, yesterday, they fired Pat Fitzgerald. There's a lot of room in between a two-week unpaid summer vacation and firing the most popular player and best coach in school history. To help us sort some of this out, Dan Wetzel, national columnist, Yahoo Sports.

I appreciate your time, sir. You are still a giant in journalism, you know that. I know you guys talked about it yesterday in the College Football Enquirer podcast, which I am a regular listener of, and it was before the firing. You guys suspected that it might go to that. Were you surprised that it went to that? Well, I think when, you know, if you go back, you know, they, on Saturday, the president kind of said, well, I think I erred and only suspending him two weeks.

So, at that point, it's like, what is four good enough? Like, are we, you know, maybe it's games, a season, I don't know. I mean, at that point, it kind of felt like it was swaying. But, so, I was and wasn't surprised. The whole thing is just a really weird story. Even if you think they came to the proper conclusion to fire Pat Fitzgerald, the way Northwestern handled it and has handled it has been like a textbook and how not to handle these things. And so that's, you know, part of the strangeness of the story and the uncertainty of the story.

Dan Wetzel, national columnist, Yahoo Sports, is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. Here's the way I looked at it this morning when I saw the news. And I guess it happened last night that they had moved on. To me, it was the, it might have been the only solution, but there's a lot of room in between a two-week unpaid summer vacation and firing where maybe if they had, do you think they just felt like, well, the stuff's not going to come out? We're not, the details are not going to come out.

Therefore, we can give them this blank sandwich and people will accept it. There's not only stuff came out like two days later to the student paper, but there's more stuff in the sporting news. There's a long detailed article about somebody who had this kind of experience back before Pat Fitzgerald was the coach when it was Randy Walker. Yeah, I mean, I guess that wouldn't, I would hope that, that's just sort of the way they've run that program. And I guess Fitzgerald hasn't changed it, which he most certainly should because I don't know there's an office or workplace in the country or many of them that are operating under the exact same guidelines and systems and what's appropriate in 2023 as they did in 1990 or 2000 or whatever, right?

Everything changes and behaviors change and standards change. Yeah, I like to recap for the listeners that, you know, they get a report that there's hazing in the program last November. They immediately hired this law firm and this independent investigation goes on seven months it took. They did over 50 interviews, staff, players, former players, former staff, all stuff.

Went through player surveys, went through emails, texts, everything, photos, whatever you got, including the original complainant. And they present their report. Last week, the president gets the report, the board of trustees must've got it. A whole bunch of lawyers at the school, the AD, I don't know, right?

A whole bunch of people got it. And they decide on Friday, we're going to give a two week suspension. So they have the full context of this fairly exhaustive investigation that they paid for. Now, what they should have done at that moment is release the investigation. If this was a public school, there would be a public document and it would be released. If this is Carolina, NC state, it becomes public. If it's Duke, it's their choice.

Private school. So the Western decides not to release it because they don't have to, but they should have. Said they put out this basically two page, not even two page executive summary that provides no details at all. Just says, well, some stuff happened. We're not really sure or whatever, but we're getting two weeks suspension.

Pat Fitzgerald has been the head coach 17 years and was a legendary player. Put it on a Friday afternoon, Friday of, uh, you know, people on vacation from July four still classic midsummer news dump. Those things don't even work anymore. You're hoping no one's paying attention, but it's almost such an obvious. We're hoping no one's paying attention that everyone then pays attention because it's like, what are you trying to hide?

This could wait till Monday or whatever, right? So they suspend them. But their hope was no one would ask any questions and the details wouldn't come out. Well, by the next morning, the complainant has talked to the student newspaper and talk to ESPN and talk to other media. He's not happy.

He's not bound. He should tell his story right now. The accusations come out unchecked. If there is any kind, I don't know that there is, I don't know that this isn't the absolute right thing to do, but let's say there is context or there are other people saying, no, no, that's not quite what happened.

Or let me explain this or here's some perspective, or I actually love coach Fitzgerald or anything like that. None of that is coming out that presumably would be in this report. Maybe the report's even worse, but I doubt it. Because why would all these people sign off on a two week thing? So Northwestern lets the narrative of the story become the allegations and nothing else. And public sentiment builds on the side of, this is ridiculous. I mean, the behaviors described are absurd and abusive.

So you're like, everyone goes with that. And then all of a sudden, three days later, the president says, oh yeah, I got to fire this guy. There was no new information for the president to react to, except he did talk to the original complaint. So maybe he was swayed by the emotion. But if you're a president of a university like Northwestern, you should be smart enough to know that what you're reading in a report is traumatic to that individual. So the strangest part of this story is we still don't know what happened.

We still don't know the full picture of what's being alleged. And among the many possibilities is they should have fired him on Friday and didn't, which you say, well, why not? Okay, what changed?

Nothing changed. So why didn't you fire him on Friday? And okay, they made a mistake Friday. They got it right on Monday. Or they made the right show call on Friday, but then got swayed by public opinion and fired him on Monday.

I don't know if either of those things are an option, but the fact that they're on the plate, this leads to confusion. Nobody knows the full story. And because of that, the people that really care about Northwestern and all of this that are following this closely are like, I have no idea whether he should or shouldn't be fired or what's going on.

Even if they found they ended up in the right spot and maybe they did, maybe they didn't, I don't know. They got there in a in a horribly mixed up way that's made this whole scandal more. America loves a mystery, and they gave America a mystery when literally nothing else is happening in sports. Dan Wentzel is joining us here, national columnist Yahoo Sports here on the Adam Gold Show. You've been covering college sports for a long time. Without saying, Pat Fitzgerald knew. Don't coaches, especially coaches who have grown up in the program and have been the program for the last 17 years, don't they generally have an idea like Rick Pitino? I understand plausible deniability, but when you go and you say if one of my players had a beer within 100 miles of Louisville, I'd know about it. You're flouting that you know what's going on in your program. The report intimated that they had no proof that Fitzgerald knew the details of the hazing, but how how probable is that that he had no idea what was going on?

Well, that becomes the question, and that's the issue. Well, he should have known, right? Okay, so he's been the head coach 17 years.

He grew up in the program. Somebody on the staff should have seen something some player. So if he should have known, then he should have known on Friday.

Why does he now should have known on Monday, right? What's changed? Like, again, what's going on here? But there's also the bit of, you know, is this did this get increasingly out of hand in this one situation or is this kind of behavior always been the case?

And this is the question. I'll give you a different type of hazing, right? There's there's hazing that's appropriate, or I think we would call harmless, right? NFL rookies, you have to stand up a lot of teams and sing your college fight song right in front of the team. It's embarrassing, whatever. This is not abusive, right?

It's just kind of funny. Or that's what you'll get an offensive line. Say there's a rookie on the offensive line. We're all going out to dinner. Look, he's got to buy, okay? You say, okay, that's kind of a funny tradition, whatever. It's fine if the bill is, say, $3,000.

Okay, the whole offensive line. It's not when they open and then you sometimes see these bills and they bought all the champagne or they wrapped up and it's $40,000. Then you go, you know what, that's actually abusive. Like that's not that's not really cool anymore. So you don't know whether the tradition on this one time got way out of line or whatever.

I have no idea. So that's the stuff where you say, well, what did Pat Fitzgerald know? If you sat there and said, oh, I don't know, the rookies always go out. The rookie always buys in the meal, but that this one time wasn't cool, but how could I stop it if I didn't know it happened?

So there's all sorts of, these stories are usually pretty complicated. Should Pat Fitzgerald, I think any coach, college coach, any sport, high school coach, whatever, you can't just sit there and go, I hope we're not hazing anymore. It's 2023. You need to actively root out hazing in your program. And Fitzgerald should have done that 30, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, they didn't, they didn't have, if a players, they didn't have, they didn't bring people into college programs and talk about, here's how we, this is how we treat women. This is our expectations on DUI.

Like now they do, right? They work proactively with a bunch of, they need to do that with hazing and any coach that isn't doing that and you're paid millions to do this job is risking their career because if Pat Fitzgerald can go down, pretty much anyone can go down on that. All right. Final thing for Dan Wetzel. We're two weeks from today, away from the first day of ACC football media days in Charlotte. And we usually kick off with the commissioner's forum, Jim Phillips, past athletic director at Northwestern. I got my hand up. I'm curious, would you like to come down and ask the first question?

I always like to come down and hang out with you. Yeah. I don't know whether I'll be there or not, but I do know Jim Phillips will be asked about this. He was the AD for a long time. So again, is the coach supposed to know? Should the AD know? I'm guessing the AD does not know.

I don't know anyone that would tolerate this. Although, but maybe, right? I certainly don't think the AD would, but maybe he knew, maybe he didn't. He's certainly going to have to answer some questions about this and presumably more is going to keep dripping out until they just release the report.

So, who knows? But yeah, it'll be question one for Jim Phillips. There's just, I mean, I don't know if they're going to call on me first, but I'm ready. I've already booked my room for Charlotte. And if you come down, we will.

We will have a beer at the Westin in Charlotte. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, Dan, thank you so much for your time, man. I appreciate it. Always good, Adam. You got it. Dan Wetzel.