Pat Fitzgerald has lawyered up, so what’s next?

Pat Fitzgerald went from two weeks of unpaid summer vacation to being fired in a three-day span. I'm sure Chip Patterson, our friend from CBS Sports and the Cover 3 Podcast has some thoughts on this.

How are you my friend? What's going on? I'm a little bit disappointed.

I missed all the good stuff out of Chris Eubanks. You know, we go live from 11 to 12. Right. And it was the perfect timing where I jumped in right as things turned. Yeah. But you know, it's been fun to watch as I mentioned last week that I spent my 4th of July watching Wimbledon. So it's been cool to see his run and certainly he's fallen to one of the best in the sport right now. So I'm excited to keep tracking him moving forward.

Yeah. The turning point was he had broken back to get the level in the 4th set tiebreak. He won the 2nd and 3rd sets. And then Medvedev broke him right back. And then the double fault to finish. His serve completely deserted him for basically the entirety of the 5th set. But incredible run.

He had two Grand Slam main draw wins in his life before this year and he won four. So good for Christopher Eubanks. Georgia Tech, go ACC! Alright, so let's get to Northwestern and Pat Fitzgerald. So walk me through, if you will, for those people who don't know, Pat Fitzgerald, an alum and a decorated football player. Best player in modern Northwestern history. Best coach they've ever had at that school in Evanston 17 years. Nine winning seasons, which is an accomplishment at Northwestern.

Five of at least nine wins. He won a couple of division titles. Never won a conference title. Although did play at a Rose Bowl, right? No, he was not the coach and they played in the Rose Bowl. He was a player.

But I mean, that's the thing. I'm glad we're able to provide some context here because one of the things that makes this so deeply, deeply saddening and disappointing is that he was kind of this college football fairy tale. He gets to be a star linebacker for a Northwestern team that makes it to the Rose Bowl in 1994. That was the peak that the program had seen. Then he comes back to be an assistant, gets promoted to be a head coach. And the levels of success that Northwestern had had was more consistency than Northwestern had seen since color television was invented. This was truly unique at a small private school in the Big 10 footprint to be able to have Northwestern at a place where getting to bowl games was a little bit more of a regularity.

And as you mentioned, you pop for a double digit win season or two, you win the Big 10 West division and get to play for the conference championship in that 2020 pandemic shortened year. And then I will say that even prior to the scandal, things are starting to fall off. Last year, last couple years have not been great.

This is not a program that I think we identified as being well suited for the transfer portal era for the NIL era. And so, you know, there are probably some big picture concerns in terms of whether the success that Pat Fitzgerald had had was going to be sustainable in the long run. But that's not what brought this about because at the end of last season, there was a hazing allegation complaint that was brought to the school. The school used an outside firm. Independent investigation goes on for six months. They come back with findings that include the fact that as many as 11 former current or former football players confirmed that the hazing had gone on.

The investigation found that it was a widespread and well known throughout the program. There were degrading acts as part of this hazing, but the investigation did not come back with any evidence that Pat Fitzgerald himself knew about it. At the conclusion of the investigation, the school and the coach, Pat Fitzgerald, agree that there should be some punishment for Pat Fitzgerald, even if he didn't know, you know, you're the leader of the program, take some ownership. They agree on a two week suspension. When the two week suspension comes out, the player who filed the complaint is unhappy with the punishment, reaches out to the Daily Northwestern, along with many other former players. The stories from the history of Northwestern football under Pat Fitzgerald begin to pile up.

They include not only the degrading acts of hazing, but even racial insensitivity and more. And that's when I think the university president, who in his own words, acting unilaterally with the support of the board, decided to up a two week suspension into an outright termination, relieving Pat Fitzgerald of his duties on Monday night. Friday, two week suspension.

Monday, he's fired. And yeah, a lot of questions to be asked about what happened. There's a lot of room. And this is what I kept talking about yesterday. There's a lot of room in between a two week summer unpaid vacation before anything happens and outright firing of arguably the most popular player in modern Northwestern football history and their best coach and best fundraiser as they embark on a new stadium, which is, I think, going to cost about $800 million.

Nobody has done fundraising for that university. He's like the Johnny Manziel to Texas A&M, what Pat Fitzgerald has meant to that school in Evanston. So there's a lot of room. And my initial reaction was when the news started to come out was that it's obviously pretty bad if the university is going to go that far because they could have easily just suspended him for six games. Suspended him for six games and be done with it because that's a hefty pound of flesh. You don't have to fire the coach, but apparently they did. There is, I believe that, you know, because you're trying to do, I believe this was mismanaged.

I believe that this was the beginning. This was mismanaged. And when the university president is saying, I only recently found out about all these things and wasn't trying to stay on top of this, it means it was not being treated with the seriousness from the beginning.

And there's just so much disappointment, right? Like you were disappointed that the level of locker room behavior would reach a point so that not just one whistleblower, but that more than a dozen former football players would start coming out with the negative experiences they had as a result of this hazing culture, which had become systemic and systemic as in there was a system that they had built in place. It wasn't just under Fitzgerald. There was a story that I read in the, I guess it was sporting news that said this happened in between when he played and when he was the head coach back in 2001 through 2004, he might've been an assistant on staff.

He was a linebackers coach during that time. You know, the training camps up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, very famous for a lot of these hazing activities. And so, you know, it is disappointing that the culture would get so abusive that it would bring out all of these negative reactions. I mean, that is inappropriate. It is downright inappropriate.

And in many cases it's illegal, right? You could literally, you could, it could go that far. Maybe, maybe I'm overstepping here. Maybe I'm out over my skis here, but we're talking about sexual assault in some cases. We're talking, we're definitely talking about sexual abuse above and beyond inappropriate conduct.

And clearly, I mean, coaches, first of all, I know the university's investigation could not pinpoint whether or not Fitzgerald knew of what went, what went on, but do you think, is it plausible that he didn't? I, I think that those sorts of activities are built like the traditional bag man before we had NIL. Right. They are set up so that the coach does not know.

Right? He doesn't know the specifics of it. You set these things up so that there is, you know, plausible deniability and all of those things. I, I think that there is more than anything, a missed opportunity here because I saw a path where if Pat Fitzgerald comes out and says, cause clearly the university and Pat Fitzgerald, if they are going to agree to a two week suspension, they are going to agree to some fault that Pat Fitzgerald is going to take for all of this. But if Pat Fitzgerald had come out and you're, I agree if the penalty had been stiffer and included missing actual games during the year, if he had said, look, this, this will not stand, you know, this has gotten out of control. We don't want to be a part of the we don't want to be a part of this. We want to have a locker room where we treat each other with respect. That's Northwestern football. We are going to take a, you know, we're going to Institute this new leadership team, or we're going to, you know, have, you could have taken ownership of this story from the allegations, from the investigations, from the findings, you could have created like some, some real change. You could have actually been able to make this so that you're not left with Pat Fitzgerald.

You're right. One of the most beloved figures in the university's modern history. Now considering, and I imagine he will absolutely be searching for every penny of the $40 million. To me, that's why he lawyered up. And do you see the lawyer he got? Yeah, the firm that employs Jeffrey Kessler, the athlete advocate. I thought he got the attorney that went after Fox in the Dominion case. And they could, they could be the same. I believe they're employed by the same firm.

Oh no. And you know, now you've got big money boosters who are going to be relied upon for the $800 million renovations. And they are very, very unhappy. You've got faculty members that are calling for a full release of the investigation and a halt of all, you know, future football projects and a university president who just showed up in September of 2022, who now, you know, how do you go hire the next football coach? Oh, you here, cause I even heard it suggested today you pay him that they're going to use all the big 10 money. Like, are you sure that just because they could pay someone $8 million a year, $9 million a year, are you sure they're not just going to go cheap on it because they don't really feel like, you know, paying top dollar for a head football coach is where they want to put their priorities? I mean, it's disappointing from the beginning with the actions and the behavior to the way the university has handled it. And disappointing because I cannot say that the immediate future for Northwestern football is looking very bright right now. There's a lot of reasons to not take that job for anybody, but I read a story today that mentions Mike Elko, Duke's head coach, as a potential candidate for them. And I'm just going to say, I understand that it's a toxic, toxic environment now, although there don't appear to be any NCAA violations in the offing, but a toxic environment. And, but with the facilities and the potential new stadium and all of that, if Northwestern was willing to pay $7 million a year for a football coach, does Mike Elko turn that down? Does Dave Clausen?

Right. Oh, that would be even, I'm not going to say a better choice, but a more logical choice since Clausen has been, that's basically his MO, is to go and, you know, resurrect programs. Um, that, that was what I, we, we were sort of targeting coaches who were near the end of runs, not ones that were going to be on the rise. But even then, I'm, I'm, I think the most important thing is to see, cause the big, the big money, the big money donors, the important ones might not be around until there's leadership change at the athletic director and university president level. Might, if I'm a coach on the right, if I'm Tommy Reese, you know, former Notre Dame quarterback and offensive coordinator currently at, um, Alabama, if I am another one of these, you know, coaches that is kind of climbing the ladder, has experience with the private school ties in the Midwest region, I, I'd wait this one out. I'd wait another cycle or two before, uh, stepping in and taking this one. Well, let me ask one, uh, one more question about this because it dovetails, dovetails into something that will happen two weeks from yesterday.

Commissioner's forum in Charlotte, ACC football media days and former Northwestern athletic director, who happens to be the commissioner of the Atlantic coast conference now, Jim Phillips. Uh, any questions people? Uh, I'll leave that up there, uh, right there for you, Chip. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, I, I think that the, what is your reaction to the story? I mean, you can't just come out. Did you know, what did you know?

That's not going to work. I think the, the interesting question that might get a more thoughtful answer is, um, you know, what, what did you think about the stories and how it was handled? You know, because I, man, we, we of course did an instant reaction pod on Monday night. Tom for Nelly and I, we jump on HQ. We jump off HQ. We start talking. And sometimes in those moments, what's happened is you've talked through all the base level stuff already, even like with each other, right.

And then you very quickly start to get to, you know, letting your mind wander a little bit and Tom for Nelly says, and I, I think this is a great question. If Jim Phillips is still there, is Pat Fitzgerald still coaching? Does having known friends in that room anymore, none of the people who you were tight with, does that contribute to how quickly this moved? If Jim Phillips is the athletic director at Northwestern, does this get handled differently from the beginning? Well, see that, that, that's where, where it all unraveled. It was clear that Northwestern thought that they could keep the details of this under wraps because once they became public and they were obviously there, um, Northwestern admits that they were there. They, they basically said that there was enough corroborating evidence, uh, that this behavior did go on. The only, the place they stopped was whether or not Fitzgerald knew, but the behavior was there. Nobody denies that. And then when they got the players to talk about it, and then there's some details in that article, uh, that makes you, to me, makes me think that, yeah, Fitzgerald knew what was going on, or at least he knew the nature of what was going on. And frankly, it might've gone on when he was a player too.

Uh, and maybe that's just the culture that just gets passed on from coach to coach to coach to coach. All right. Real, real quick before we, before I have to say goodbye to you, Chip Patterson, uh, cause we'll all be down there in two weeks and maybe we should talk about this next week, but I'll just ask you the question.

Now you can give me a 60 second answer. Uh, other than is Florida State ready? What's the other big storyline for ACC football media day two weeks from now? Is Mario Cristobal over his head?

Whoa. Eight million dollars a year over his head. Listen, this is, this is a very, very big year for Mario Cristobal. I am working on a story right now about year two coaches.

I've all I write it every single year. I believe that your second season is one of the most pivotal throughout your coaching tenure. And he went five and seven last year after being picked to, uh, win the coastal division and at ACC media kickoff, he made bad staff hires. He now has new coordinators.

He's at the transfer portal to try to plug some holes, but he was begging parents to come pick up their children off his roster at the end of last season. He's a great salesman of the, of the program. So I think he will do well, but man, that is, that's Miami's native son. Yeah.

And he's, he's got a, he's got a tough, tough road to hoe because I tell you what, I've run the Chipolytics. I think they're going to be pretty average. I think they're going to be right there, middle of the pack. I'm not making an argument for any higher than fifth place in the ACC. And that's, it's pretty average.

That's very, very average. They'll be, uh, they'll be staring up at Duke. Uh, Chip Patterson, you're the man. I'll, I'll, uh, I'll talk to you next week and I'll see you in a couple.

Sounds good. Y'all be working. Chip Patterson here on the Adam Gold show. Uh, that's what I keep getting back to with Northwestern. And I realize it seems like we've been kind of, uh, you know, talking about this every day, but there's, there's something else just about every day that comes out about this. The university thought that it would just be under wraps. Nobody would care. It's just Northwestern football. Like I get it. Everybody's busy on a weekend. And when you dump the new one, when you dump the news at two 45 on a Friday afternoon, people aren't going to pay attention.

You know what? The internet never forgets. It's still sitting there. That story is still sitting there.

And then you got the people that you did wrong, that you did dirty by such a light punishment. There's never going to stay quiet.