Fired Northwestern University head football coach at center of hazing scandal sues school for $130 million

CHICAGO (CN) — Northwestern University’s ex-head football coach Pat Fitzgerald sued the Big Ten school in Cook County on Thursday for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, adding a new wrinkle to the monthslong football hazing scandal in which Northwestern has found itself embroiled.

Fitzgerald demands over $130 million from Northwestern in the suit. He argues that the school’s decision to fire him — coming on the heels of students accusing him of enabling a sexualized hazing culture among the football team — ruined his reputation and effectively ended his 30-plus year football career.

“As a result of defendants’ false statements, Fitzgerald has been unable to obtain a position as a head coach for a major collegiate football program or on the coaching staff of a professional football program,” Fitzgerald said in the suit.

Fitzgerald is represented by Chicago attorney of Dan Webb of Winston & Strawn, who also served as the special prosecutor in actor Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax case.

Northwestern fired Fitzgerald July 10, two days after student journalists at the university published damning testimonials of sexual hazing rituals in its football program. The students’ report in The Daily Northwestern included allegations that Fitzgerald knew about the hazing of freshman players by upperclassmen, and even participated in it.

Specifically, students speaking with The Daily Northwestern anonymously accused Fitzgerald of signaling upperclassmen to “run” freshman players who made mistakes during practice. “Running” a player involved as many as 10 masked upperclassmen restraining and dry-humping the freshman victim in a locker room. The hazing ritual was signaled by the so-called “Shrek clap” — when a senior player, or allegedly Fitzgerald, would clap their hands above their head around the offending freshman.

Numerous lawsuits filed against Northwestern and Fitzgerald since July have echoed the same accusations.

The university had known about the hazing allegations since November 2022, when an anonymous whistleblower report prompted administrators to open an independent investigation into the football program. In its executive summary of the investigation, released July 7, Northwestern announced that it had not found sufficient evidence to implicate Fitzgerald and other coaching staff directly, but that they ought to have known the hazing was occurring.

“The investigation team did not discover sufficient evidence to believe that coaching staff knew about the ongoing hazing conduct. They determined, however, that there had been significant opportunities to discover and report the hazing conduct,” the summary reads.

The school initially said that it was suspending Fitzgerald for two weeks without pay, a disciplinary measure which, per Fitzgerald’s complaint, he accepted on July 6. But following the release of the Daily Northwestern story on July 8, the university decided to up Fitzgerald’s punishment. Three days after Fitzgerald began serving his two week suspension on July 7, Northwestern President Michael Schill publicly announced Fitzgerald had been “relieved of his duties.”

This heightened punishment, Fitzgerald’s lawsuit argues, was a violation of the coach’s employment agreement as well his oral contract with the school to willingly accept a two-week suspension.

“Northwestern promised Fitzgerald that if he agreed to Northwestern’s proposed oral contract, it would put the entire matter to bed, and Fitzgerald would not face any additional consequences as a result of the … hazing subject matter investigated,” Fitzgerald said in the suit. “However, within four days after the July 6, 2023, oral contract with Fitzgerald, Northwestern made the calculated decision to illegally breach that oral contract.”

Since the November 2022 investigation concluded there was insufficient evidence to directly implicate Fitzgerald in any hazing practices, Fitzgerald argues that Northwestern firing him “for cause” also constitutes defamation.

According to Fitzgerald, “When defendants made a public announcement … that they were terminating Fitzgerald’s employment contract ‘for cause,’ when in fact there was no factual basis for a termination ‘for cause,’ defendants published false statements that defamed Fitzgerald and irreparably harmed his reputation as one of the finest Division I football coaches in the country.”

Fitzgerald further claims he and his family suffered “enormous emotional distress” when they realized that — regardless of how the ex-coach’s ongoing legal struggles pan out — he will never again occupy a position of similar prestige.

“This emotional distress will undoubtedly extend for years,” Fitzgerald said in the suit.

Besides serving as a legal counter-attack on the university that fired him — and the university’s president Michael Schill — the suit also attempts to portray Fitzgerald in a more positive light than seen in the recent hazing allegations against him.

It details the ex-coach’s lifelong immersion in football, beginning with his years as a high school linebacker in a Chicago suburb in the early 1990s, through his time as a student player at Northwestern, to his brief stint with the Dallas Cowboys in 1997 and the beginning of his coaching career at his alma mater in 1998. It culminates with Fitzgerald’s ascension to head coach in 2006 at the age of 31, and the achievements the team has won since then.

“Between 2006 and 2023, Northwestern won 110 football games, making Fitzgerald the winningest head coach in Northwestern history,” Fitzgerald said in the suit.

Fitzgerald is not the only Northwestern coach caught up in athletics controversies. In August, three former baseball staff members sued the university and their former boss, ex-head baseball coach Jim Foster, who allegedly created an “abusive, toxic and dangerous environment” for staff and student athletes. That case is still pending in the Cook County Circuit Court.

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