Northwestern and former coach Pat Fitzgerald have settled the wrongful termination lawsuit he brought against the school after his firing in the summer of 2023.
The longtime Wildcats coach was fired after allegations of hazing within the program were made public. Fitzgerald’s firing came after he was initially given a two-week suspension, but was fired days after a story was published detailing the hazing allegations.
Fitzgerald said in a statement on Thursday that it had been proven he did not know about the hazing allegations while he was head coach. However, he did confirm that hazing had taken place under his watch. Fitzgerald had filed a suit asking for $130 million and terms of the settlement are not publicly known.
“For the past two years, I have engaged in a process of extensive fact and expert discovery, which showed what I have known and said all along — that I had no knowledge of hazing ever occurring in the Northwestern football program, and that I never directed or encouraged hazing in any way,” Fitzgerald said.
“Through discovery, I learned that some hazing did occur in the football program at Northwestern. I am extremely disappointed that members of the team engaged in this behavior and that no one reported it to me, so that I could have alerted Northwestern’s athletic department and administrators, stopped the inappropriate behavior, and taken every necessary step to protect Northwestern’s student athletes.”
Former players told the Daily Northwestern that players could be subject to a hazing ritual called “running” where he “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.”
When Fitzgerald was fired, Northwestern president Michael Schill said he was the one who made the decision. When Fitzgerald was suspended, the school said that it didn’t find that he or his coaches were aware of the hazing but there were “significant opportunities” for coaches to find out that it was taking place and report it.
Fitzgerald was Northwestern’s coach for 17 years after he got the head coaching job in 2006. The program won 10 games three different times in his tenure and went 110-101. However, Northwestern was just 4-20 over his final two seasons and went 1-11 in 2022.
David Braun is entering his third season as Northwestern’s coach after he was promoted to replace Fitzgerald ahead of the 2023 season. Braun arrived that offseason after he was the defensive coordinator at North Dakota State from 2019 through 2022.
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