The lesson in Pat Fitzgerald's downfall at Northwestern

“Everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn’t end.” — Tom Cruise, in Cocktail 

Pat Fitzgerald was fired Monday, as Northwestern parted ways with its most beloved alum and best head coach in school history amid allegations of ugly and systemic hazing within the Wildcats’ football program. 

I won’t recap all the gross and demeaning details the “The Daily Northwestern” uncovered in recent days, but Northwestern’s president Michael Schill confirmed the whistleblower’s allegations and noted that they have since been corroborated by 11 other former players. 

It’s a shocking downfall for one of college football’s most respected figures. The man who was supposed to coach in Evanston forever is suddenly gone.

Fitzgerald has spent 26 of the last 30 years of his life at Northwestern, first starring as the best defensive player in the country on the Cineredlla Rose Bowl team in 1995 before getting into coaching. He was an assistant for five seasons before the sudden passing of Randy Walker, where at age 32, he was promoted to head coach. 

He was the Prodigal Son who played at home, stayed home (even turning down the Green Bay Packers at one point) and later took the program to heights it had never seen (two Big Ten Championship appearances since 2018). 

The last few seasons have been brutal (2-16 in Big Ten play), yet clearly, what’s been happening behind the scenes has been worse. And still, Fitzgerald’s image as the quintessential “culture coach” and father figure never wavered. Even after he was fired Monday, many in the industry continued to tout Fitzgerald’s stellar reputation and character. 

There’s a lesson in that. 

For the last 17 seasons, Fitzgerald has been romanticized and proselytized by many in the industry. He was revered as the hard-working, smart, tough guy head coach. He was propped up as the ultimate family man. He was the head coach that every other head coach wanted their son to play for. The type of man your daughter should marry. 

Perhaps much of that remains true today. Fitzgerald got his players to graduate. He poured his life into Northwestern’s program, getting the school to build one of the best football facilities in America and convincing boosters to pay for an $800 million stadium.

But for all the good that he did, and for as decent and honorable many believe Pat Fitzgerald to be, he was also clearly arrogant and oblivious — at best — to ignore the disgusting behavior permeating through his program. 

This is a 101 example of the dangers of propping up a team or a coach’s culture. We don’t truly know what’s going on inside these programs. We can have an idea. An inkling. But we don’t really know the true interworking of teams with 125+ players, coaches and support staffers.

And how can we — or should we — know what’s going on when a head coach who’s been lauded for building one of the best cultures in the nation allegedly didn’t know what was going on right under his own nose?

Does Georgia have a cultural issue because players can’t stop speeding? Maybe? But maybe not. Was Clemson the best “culture program” among the recent title winners? Or did the Tigers just have really good players?

It’s easy in hindsight to cherry pick examples where programs had clear cultural successes and failures, but largely, we — those in the public, be it media or fans — are in the dark. A week ago, hardly anyone in the country had a clue of what was happening in Northwestern’s locker room. Fitzgerald was fired because he either willingly or stubbornly ignored signs of said systemic problems. And he was in the building. 

I’m as guilty as others in the industry of highlighting cases where a program’s culture did change for the better and led to improved results (see: 2022 TCU), but the way we talk about culture with college football programs needs to change.

Pat Fitzgerald was seen as infallible in the coaching universe. No one is. Culture, the very thing he was revered for establishing, cultivating and continuing for close to two decades at Northwestern, cost him his job. There’s a lesson in that.