As I understand it, the last Camp Kenosha was several years ago, they were suspended during the pandemic and had not yet been resumed.
All of the details may yet come to light. Pat has authorized legal counsel to pursue all legal remedies-prplehaze speak for filing suit. If NU doesn’t settle, discovery will be most interesting as would cross-examination of both Pat and Shill. Stay tuned.
With open season on the entire roster the upcoming several seasons could prove disastrous. An already difficult rebuild made significantly more difficult, especially with the complicated transfer in process
Go Cats
Mark
I think the long-term ramifications of this for Northwestern football will take a while to unfold. At this point, I think a lot could be on hold, like the stadium project. Does the Board of Trustees still think now’s a good time to invest $800 million in a football stadium?
As for Fitz and any potential legal action, I think hiring Dan Webb is just a negotiating ploy. He’s the biggest name in Chicago, or at least at the top of a very short list. But both sides will want to reach a settlement in short order, I would think. Then again, maybe the university wants to fight. I’ve been surprised by the whole thing so far. Maybe more surprises in store.
I’m no lawyer, but every big contract I’ve ever heard of has a clause that allows termination for cause, right?
The question would be: Did Fitz condone any sort of activity that could be considered hazing, or worse. I don’t think either side wants this is open court, and this does give Fitz an opportunity to move on to a new opportunity, so I’d expect this to be resolved quickly. I hope so for NU’s sake.
USAA Baseball rules on “adult abuse” require an immediate suspension and then removal of any official, manager, coach or assistant accused of violating their rules. It makes you very uncomfortable being a league official, because you know you are one accusation away from having to remove a successful coach who is the subject of a bogus yet undefensable accusation.
I just hope this isn’t one of those player getting even for lack of playing time issues.
rsl
I can’t imagine ,at least for the time being ,the new stadium going forward. Evanston was fighting it anyhow and Pat Ryan , a very big Fitz supporter , was going to write a check for several hundred million. I dont think he will still be committed to that pledge.
Harry
John,
I agree that this is an existential challenge for NU athletics.
But before digging into that thought, I believe it also laid bare the institutional weakness that reaches all the way to the top.
When your own student newspaper staffed by summer interns was able to break the stories that blew up the University’s attempted cover up, it’s clear that the AD and the new Prez SERIOUSLY underestimated what the impact would be if the whole story got out.
Then the demonstration that their fall guy, the one that just got fired, was the one with the most class among all of those people. It just confirmed what we already knew. The folks running the show are still just trying to contain this story rather than address the underlying institutional issues.
With regard to the existential challenge for NU athletics, NU can no longer claim that they are an exceptional institution with a culture that celebrates the student-athlete.
It is unclear where they go from here.
My preference is that they stop playing football and probably leave the B1G. That’s highly unlikely given the cowardly performance of current leadership. They aren’t going to be able to walk away from the money or the alums willing to subsidize the athletic programs.
More likely is that they will return to the “pre-Barnett” years with a series of football coaches who attempt to apply the strategies which worked at other schools to the special circumstances at NU.
Also it is likely that law suits will force a reluctant leadership to conduct a top to bottom review of who else should be held accountable and what institutional changes are needed to build a different athletic culture.
Fitz will be fine. Hopefully he has invested wisely and doesn’t have to keep working. Subsequent investigations will likely vindicate him to some degree as spread of institutional rot is revealed. If he does want to keep coaching, he will have his choice of jobs at other schools where winning is the primary cultural focus. Maybe he’ll end up with his dream job coaching the Bears.
But more than anything else, this is the end of an era.
What it will be in the future is unclear.
What is clear is that it won’t, it can’t, ever be the same. That’s because the culture that we thought existed was an illusion. It was a fantasy that made it easier to accept the brutality that is at the core of college football. All that remains is the truth that this is a blood sport that permanently disables many of those who participate and makes a lot of money for the institutions that support it.
Jeff
I’ve done some reorganization of recent posts to try to get them into more logical topic groups, at least for those who use the Discourse online interface to access the list.
I can think of of a number of coaches who have been fired ‘for cause’, and in nearly every instance the person who was fired sued. In most cases an out-of-court settlement was made. I think Notre Dame took one to court and lost. I think Texas Tech and the estate of Mike Leach are still in settlement talks, and he was fired in 2009. The situation at West Virginia is kind of unique in that the coach now says he didn’t resign, probably after his lawyer told him resigning means no settlement.
IMHO it would be best for Northwestern to come to a (relatively) quiet settlement with Fitz, because dragging this thing through the media and the courts for the next several years does NU no favors.
I have been watching this saga unfold while on vacation, each email update more sad than the last. It’s something that had to be done, but it’s sure not going to make the future easy for northwestern’s student athletes or football program. Thank goodness we’re locked in with the Big Ten, or we could be left out of all this realignment shakeup. Otherwise, it’s just a sad story all around. It’s probably the only way I could see Fitz being forced out at NU. It’s not the JoePa/Sandusky case by any means, but it is a mini version of it – both in what Fitz means to NU and in the magnitude of the scandal. I’m just left with sadness for everyone involved and knowing that this was necessary, but a sad end to the story.
As for the lingering questions … I’m sure none of this was done without checking with Mr. Ryan and the board, despite what the president said in his note. The new stadium might be their way to entice a coach in with a fresh start and stadium. So I actually think that’s more likely to happen now than if Fitz had stayed and it was a cloud hanging over the whole proceedings.
The bigger questions are who stays with the transfer portal and whether the interim staff can shepherd the team through these next few months of uncertainty and minimize the damages. I’m not sure the job is that attractive even with the facilities that are there and may be on the way. I’d be scouring the MAC right now for promising young coordinators who want to build something and give them control over everything they want with staffing and such. That might be the best route for a long-term rebuild.
Anyway, I’m proud of the Daily student journalists who uncovered this and hoping the student athletes can get what they need to get through this. It’s going to be a rough few years. But Mike Wilbon is right that NU needs to live up to its potential and hold itself to higher standards. If that means taking some time to make sure we get it done right, I’m OK with that.
Go Cats!
-SjT
I haven’t seen much on how the staff and team were notified. I did see that the AD was traveling in Europe. How many of the players were even on campus for summer conditioning?
Rocky Miller was the Northwestern President when I was an undergrad, and he was pretty much the invisible man on campus. The running joke was that there was actually a J. Rosco Miller suit in a closet that some janitor in Tech wore when they needed him to show up somewhere.
When he showed up to address the students after the Kent State shootings, it was probably the first time most of the students assembled in Deering Meadow had ever seen him.
When it comes to chief executive officers, I’ve always liked the line in “Fiddler on the Roof” regarding a prayer for the Tzar: May God bless and keep the Tzar, as far away as possible.
Be careful deifying the Daily Northwestern journalists as reporting has gotten very sloppy in recent times with journalists being their own sources to push forward the narrative they like.
I hope Northwestern doesn’t settle as otherwise we won’t truly know who truly knew what, much less what actually happened in the locker room and with what frequency.
I’m not sure I want to know much more, I’m not sure knowing would make my life better or would make NU a better place.
And I can tell you from multiple first-hand incidents that you’ll get so many conflicting stories about who did what and when that there might not be much clarity gained.
I don’t know that NU is going to have much choice.
Even if Fitz and NU are able to agree on a severance package, there are going to be others who will be able to make a case that they were injured in one way or another.
At some point NU is going to forced to release its internal investigation.
If that investigation is consistent with later reporting, then the administration is going to be liable for claims that they didn’t take the appropriate action as soon as they become aware of the problems.
If that investigation is inconsistent with later facts, then the administration is going to have to explain why their investigation was so flawed.
THEN
In either case, the administration is going to have to explain they didn’t exercise more oversight on the athletic program, particularly given Fitz’s public stance regarding the corrosive effects of hazing.
It is also likely that some of those aggrieved parties can point to their efforts to alert various people outside the football staff of the problems they were seeing.
As a result, you are likely going to see the administration restructure itself as a first step toward changing the culture that allowed this hazing and racism to flourish.
Unless NU does an about face, conducts a real investigation, and a willingness to hold ALL those accountable who had a role, this is going to dribble out in ongoing news reports and legal proceedings for quite a while.
Jeff
I think anyone who decides to sue will have some sort of access to the report. They may be required to not publicly disclose information , or perhaps keep it under seal ( not sure exactly how that works) but given its potential relevancy to their case it couldn’t be hidden from a plaintiff.
Harry
NDAs often aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, there are too many backchannels for information to stay confidential, especially when there are hundreds of journalists willing to accept and print confidential or classified information.
If it’s only 3 or 4 years, I’d probably be relieved. I’m worried that the NCAA record losing streak we already own could be in jeopardy. It’s already at 11 from last year.
It all depends on who takes over and just how much the stables get shoveled out. In the hands of the right coach, this could be a positive turning point.
Dr. Derrick Gragg, NU’s AD, is back in town and has told the assistant coaches and support staff that they still have their jobs for the 2023 season.
Retaining the rest of the staff seems extremely strange given the fact I’m sure they were MUCH closer to the “action” than Fitz.
Firing the CEO for accounting fraud at Enron is correct, but unless you take out ALL of the finance leadership you haven’t culled the perpetrators. Even the senior staff is probably knowledgeable and participated in the fraud and therefore complicit even if they had no authority.
I think Gragg shouldn’t have made such a statement nor should Schill provide Gragg a vote of confidence nor the trustees of Schill.
Yup, that’s the situation.
Fitz likely has a good case to contest his “for cause” firing. Dan Webb has already laid out the terms of what will form the foundation for their claims. Fitz and the University had agreed to a two week suspension based on the internal investigation. According to Webb that investigation included much of the detail that later surfaced in the press. Schill fired Fitz a few days later without any additional discussion as the University struggled to contain the public outcry to take harsher action. So Fitz is now deprived of the income that was otherwise guaranteed in his contract AND suffered severe damage to his reputation. My guess is that we are looking at an opening number that could reach $100M. Don’t know what the limits are for NU’s insurance on these sorts of matters, but I suspect it will be tested.
If Webb is successful in painting this as Fitz being the fall guy for a botched PR job to cover a much deeper institutional scandal, it is hard to see how Schill and Gragg survive. While they can’t be held accountable for a culture that they inherited, they can be held accountable for not taking more decisive steps to change that culture before it became public knowledge AND they will certainly be held accountable for their attempts to cover it up.
I don’t know why institutions continue to believe that they can pin stuff like this on one guy. It is never that simple. Blowing one guy up can never be contained. The debris always lands on a bunch of other people. It never solves the core problem. It only prolongs the pain of the necessary and extensive restructuring that has to happen before this institution can again start to move forward.
Imagine how different this would look if after Schill took the job, Gragg had approached him with a plan to clean house because of the abuses that Gragg discovered. It would have been a bold move, but it would have put a much different spin on this whole thing. NU’s reputation as a school that lives their values would have been preserved. Don’t know whether it would have saved Fitz’s job. Don’t know if it would have saved the new stadium plans. But NU would be in a much better place today than they are right now.
But institutions have a strong sense of self preservation which is very difficult to overcome. They are much more likely to shoot the messenger bearing bad news than take that bad news seriously. That’s how folks like Larry Nassar could get away with abusing young girls for 25 years. It’s taken MSU almost ten years and they are still struggling with the repercussions. Jerry Sandusky also abused kids for 25 years before he was arrested. Eventually a handful of the top University administrators including Joe Pa and the AD were all fired. A former director of the FBI was brought in by the trustees to investigate the whole thing. It took them seven years or so to put all that behind them.
While the allegations here aren’t nearly as severe as those at MSU or PSU, the repercussions could easily be as far reaching.
Jeff
Jeff point about the details in the press probably comes down to the Daily. It appears their article changed Schills mind
I have no idea how good the reporters are at the Daily , particularly over the summer where I m guessing there is a bit of a skeletal staff. Could for example some one have called them and claimed to be the kid who brought on the investigation , when it wasn’t him? I’m not betting on that,
just asking how well they may have even checked their sources?
Harry