Northwestern football is dead after Pat Fitzgerald is fired

As more news and allegations about the inappropriate behavior and hazing taking place within the Northwestern football program over the past 48 hours has become available, it also became evident that Pat Fitzgerald’s job was in jeopardy.

After being suspended for two weeks, the vultures began circling around Evanston, Illinois, waiting for the next opportunity to strike. They did this in the form of sexualized hazing and even a claim by a former player of an inappropriate racial environment.

“I didn’t feel like I could be anything other than white,” Ramon Diaz Jr. stated after going on the record about the allegation. “We never felt like we could be ourselves. We had to fit in by being white or acting white or laughing at our own people?”

Diaz played at Northwestern under Pat Fitzgerald during the coach’s first three seasons at the helm. Given today’s environment and sensitivity to such issues, it became evident that the Northwestern University Athletic Department and Board of Trustees were going to need to make a move or suffer a tremendous backlash from the court of public opinion.

Fitzgerald was removed from his position as head coach of Northwestern football as of last night, meaning the Big Ten’s second longest-tenured coach is without a job and Northwestern is without a head coach only weeks before the 2023 season is scheduled to begin.

Under Pat Fitzgerald, Northwestern football was respected, which is more than they could say for the majority of their time as a participant in Division I college football.

Fitzgerald finishes his career at Northwestern having coached 17 seasons with an overall record of 110-101. His games coached and victories are far and away more than any other coach in the school’s history. Given the fact that the Wildcats were the bottom dwellers in the Big Ten Conference for so long, you can’t help but feel like we are witnessing a self-proposed death sentence by a Power Five Program, and they have no one else to blame but themselves.

Anyone who has ever stood over an open casket of someone who they once knew, this very much feels like that for many college football fans within the Big Ten and Midwest. You may not have been a family member (fans of the program,) but you knew the individual, and as you stand there looking at the artwork of the mortician, you understand that that body is lifeless. The essence of that human is no longer there. Such is the case with Northwestern.

This Northwestern football program, despite all of its hurdles due to academic standards, geographical location, and losing tradition, was at least respectable under Fitzgerald. Not any longer. The Northwestern Program might as well call the coroner – it’s dead!

The terrible allegations coupled with the firing of its most successful coach in school history are a death nail that even the NCAA couldn’t deliver. I understand that the University has some very rich alumni and donors with some seriously deep pockets, but the ivy league school of the Midwest might as well pack up shop and remove itself from even attempting to play a Power-5 schedule.

Penn State thought they had it hard when they suffered scholarship reductions and post-season bowl bands due to the Jerry Sandusky scandal, but this feels more like the SMU scandal and death sentence in the late-80s. This is a program crippling moment for Northwestern Football, and I honestly don’t know if they will be able to recover from this within my lifetime.

If Northwestern happens to be on your schedule this season, you might as well wear black to the game and pay your last respects, because you aren’t attending a football game, but rather, you will be attending a funeral.