Northwestern Fires Pat Fitzgerald After New Hazing Allegations

A day after a report from Northwestern’s student newspaper detailing hazing within the the Wildcats’ football program, the school fired head coach Pat Fitzgerald after 17 seasons.

The report from The Daily Northwestern detailed a practice known as “running”, wherein players “would be restrained by a group of 8-10 upperclassmen dressed in various “Purge-like” masks, who would then begin ‘dry-humping’ the victim in a dark locker room.”

The paper also published a story today detailing several players describing the program as having a “culture enabling racism.”

It seems pretty crazy that Fitzgerald is the coach under whose watch something like this was going down because he’s definitely not one of the guys I would have picked to have this going on in his program, but here we are.

Northwestern will now go into the 2023 season with a head coach other than the guy who has been at the helm for nearly two decades and led the Wildcats to 10 of their 16 bowl games in school history.