How do you win at Northwestern?
Pat Fitzgerald is out after 22 years at Northwestern and the academy is making a move against the gridiron. What's next for the Wildcats?
The Northwestern athletics program is really taking it on the chin. Shortly after suspending head football coach Pat Fitzgerald for alleged hazing, which we touched on earlier this week, an article came out detailing the hazing and then a subsequent article from some of the same sources claiming he fostered a “racist” culture.
Meanwhile the baseball coach took a hit over allegations of creating a “toxic” environment in that program.
It’s interesting to me how uncritically folks in media are accepting the timing of all these stories. When the same athletics department is getting hit from multiple angles in the media at the same time, it reeks of planted stories (I don’t mean fake ones) and some sort of targeted hit with an agenda behind it. What’s the agenda? I have no idea. If I were a coach considering replacing Fitzgerald, I’d definitely want to know.
Today that latter point be our main focus. How do you replace Fitzgerald in that job and what’s the formula for winning in Evanston? Especially once the highly favorable “Big 10 West” division is folded or absorbs USC or otherwise no longer serves as the weakest big time division in college football.
Fitzgerald was 110-101 at Northwestern and 56-76 in the Big 10 with two division titles, three double-digit win seasons, and a single double-digit loss season which so happened to precipitate being fired with cause…
How can the next coach match that?
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