Puttin' on the Fitz

 The whole affair around the firing of longtime Northwestern football coach Patrick Fitzgerald has an odor around it.  Frankly, I am very torn. There are indicators that point in different directions on this. 

On one hand, I am mindful of the Penn State situation.  You just didn’t want to believe that Papa Joe Paterno allowed his assistant to do the things he did right under his nose.   Similarly, the abuse of women athletes by Larry Nassar went on unabated under the noses of coaches, the AD, the president of Michigan State and even the FBI.  I’d hate to stay in a state of denial about the athletic program of NU.. 

But something doesn’t smell right about any of this.  There are signs everywhere that something else is going on here.  There was no indication that Fitzgerald had any knowledge of inappropriate behavior.  None of the behavior rose to a criminal level, nor was there any indication that any of it could have caused physical injury.  It was mostly guys doing stupid, tribal stuff.

Fitz himself has a sterling reputation among coaches.  He is a real NU guy, bleeds purple and all that.  He has taken a bottom rung program, and usually puts a credible team on the field, even though his kids actually have to meet certain academic standards and pass classes.   None of the student athletes that I came into contact with ever had regrets about playing there.  Northwestern’s football program boasted a 98% graduation rate last year,  and placed first or second among FSB programs in the nation.  Compare that to almost any other program in the country, where players are treated like chattel.  NU players

What has my Woke detector going off are several factors.  First, this started with the school newspaper, a notoriously leftist bunch. Second, it was an attack writ large on the entire athletic program.  It was not focused on a single incident or set of incidents, and the allegations were unspecific, and stitched together from disparate corners.  The baseball coach was criticized as creating a “toxic atmosphere” (a/k/a demanding hard work and consistent performance).   There were allegations of racist and sexist comments.  One coach was quoted as saying that he didn’t want a young, pretty assistant on the sideline because it would be distracting to the players (oh, recognizing the horrors of healthy, athletic young men acting, like, well, normal healthy, athletic young men).  Most suspicious was dragging a Mr. Diaz, a kid that graduated in ’08 to claim he had PTSD from his treatment at NU.  They couldn’t dig up old claim of sexual impropriety on Fitz himself (see the experience of Joshua Katz at Princeton and Roland Fryer at Harvard) so they fingered his players instead. 

The weird way the president handled the whole affair raises suspicions.  Michael Schill had all the facts available to him and decided to give Fitz a two week suspension.  Then, apparently under some pressure from somewhere, he reversed himself WITH NO NEW INFORMATION and fired Fitz, consistent with the cowardly responses to Woke pressure that is the norm in academia. 

And now, the slip and fall lawyers have gotten into the act.  One notorious race baiting lawyer is representing 8 players in a suit against the school and Fitz.  Another, Pat Salvi has said he’s going after the women’s programs.

When you put all the pieces together,  the attack on NU athletics has all the markings of a well-planned, coordinated effort to take down the entire athletic program at NU.  Who is leading this?  We may never know.  The lawsuits will all likely be settled quietly and will not reveal much.

What do I think is really going on?  Leftists hate competitive athletics.  And they are sneaky.  If you wanted to reduce NU’s athletic presence to DIII, the proper thing to do would be to take it through the trustees and have a vote.  But that would have met with resistance from some large donors.

So they decided to take this route.   Attack the entire program with a potpourri of Woke bugaboos:  stitch together allegations of racism, sexism and abuse to paint a picture of an inchoate “toxic environment”   with relatively minor incidents. Drag out resentful people that graduated long ago.  And then bring in the artillery- the plaintiff’s lawyers to destroy the program.  Of course the big game trophy was the new planned football stadium which will now never be constructed.

Yet another academic institution has allowed the radical Left to take control because of the lack of backbone in its president.