Ron Cook
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
PITTSBURGH — I worked in the Northwestern Sports Information office as a college student and was with the football team for the game at Notre Dame in 1975. Running back Greg Boykin held the ball out and taunted the Irish defense as he scored a 4-yard touchdown to give the Wildcats an early 7-0 lead. Notre Dame, led by sophomore quarterback Joe Montana, came back to win a close one, 31-7.
I was on the Northwestern team bus coming back from Michigan later in the 1975 season. The Wildcats were beaten 69-0. I learned that day to look at Michigan fans as the most arrogant fans in all of sports.
I was there for the start of a six-season run for Northwestern that produced a 3-62-1 record. That included a record 34 consecutive losses.
It was hard to be a proud Northwestern student and alum in those days.
It’s a lot harder now.
Northwestern might have been losers on the field, but it had an excellent reputation as an academic institution. The Big Ten Conference loved having it as a member because of the academic prestige it brought.
Northwestern lost, but it lost with honor.
And now?
Northwestern knows only shame.
In the span of five days in July, Northwestern fired long-time football coach Pat Fitzgerald and baseball coach Jim Foster. Fitzgerald was terminated after frightening allegations of hazing in his program, Foster for a toxic culture in his that included bullying and verbal abuse.
What a sad five days it was for my alma mater.
Fitzgerald’s dismissal was particularly hard to see. Northwestern has had 12 winning football seasons in the past 50-plus years. Fitzgerald, the head coach since 2006, was responsible for 10, including two as a player. He won the Bronko Nagurski award as college defensive player of the year in 1995 and 1996, leading Northwestern to the Rose Bowl after the 1995 season. I covered that game in Pasadena and still have a baggy somewhere filled with some purple grass I collected from the Rose Bowl end zone. I never even dreamed I would see that day on that bus ride home from Michigan.
That’s why I didn’t want to believe the allegations of hazing, including sexualized acts, in Fitzgerald’s program.
Northwestern initially suspended Fitzgerald for two weeks without pay after its investigation into the program. It then fired him after the school newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, reported more detailed allegations from a whistleblower that were backed up by another former player.
“The head coach is ultimately responsible for the culture of his team,” Northwestern president Michael Schill wrote in a statement. “The hazing we investigated was widespread and clearly not a secret within the program.”
I am afraid of what might come next.
Three former unnamed players filed complaints, naming Fitzgerald, Schill and others as individual defendants. A fourth, Lloyd Yates, who played quarterback and wide receiver from 2015-17, put his name on his lawsuit that named just the university for its “brainwashing culture” of hazing and abuse that became “normalized.” Yates’ attorney, Ben Crump, told the media at a news conference that he expects to file more than 30 lawsuits from former Northwestern football players and athletes in other sports at the university.
Yates told ESPN he was “overcome with disappointment, frustration, and shame. … No young teenager should have to bear what we did as freshmen students. We were conditioned to believe that was normal, which was sickening and unacceptable.”
I have to admit …
I miss those days when Northwestern’s only humiliation came from getting its brains beat in by Notre Dame and Michigan.
I’m sure Fitzgerald, just 48, will coach again. He is that highly regarded. I’ve always thought he could have ended up as the coach at Notre Dame if he hadn’t been so loyal to Northwestern. He would have been a terrific recruiter at Notre Dame because of his Midwestern roots and his track record, theoretically, of attracting a higher caliber of player academically.
I’m not so sure of Northwestern bouncing back as a football program. Then again, that bar isn’t very high right now. The Wildcats beat Nebraska, 31-28, in Dublin in their opening game last season but lost their next 11 games to finish 1-11.
I think I’ll be happy if Northwestern doesn’t threaten that record 34-game losing streak.
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