Pat Fitzgerald Gets Paid, Northwestern Keeps Its Rot

Northwestern University would like to tell the world that its confidential settlement with Pat Fitzgerald has brought closure. In reality, it has brought nothing of the sort. What this settlement really represents is a powerful institution buying its way out of accountability, covering up the ugliest truths of its own locker rooms, and protecting the careers of administrators who failed at every level of leadership.

Northwestern didn’t just fail its athletes: it protected its brand at all costs, turning sexual humiliation into a footnote and writing checks to bury the truth. How Northwestern handled the scandal is a case study in botched crisis management, all the more stunning given that it was bungled by an organization that promotes itself as exceptional.

The facts are not in dispute. Hazing was rampant in Fitzgerald’s football program. We are not talking about the juvenile pranks of a 1950s fraternity movie. We are talking about ritualized sexual abuse. Players reported being forced into “running” drills where upperclassmen in masks dry-humped them as punishment. There were coerced naked workouts. There were humiliations designed to break young athletes physically, sexually, and psychologically. And this did not happen once or twice. It was systemic.

The independent investigation confirmed the culture was widespread, but Northwestern’s leadership pretended not to know. President Michael Schill initially imposed a laughable two-week suspension on Fitzgerald. Only after the public learned the lurid details did the university fire its most famous employee.

It was not a moral decision. It was a PR calculation. Then there was Derrick Gragg, who was nominally the athletic director when the scandal broke but has since been promoted to a sinecure position, moved upstairs rather than out: a classic administrative shuffle that preserves the résumé while ducking responsibility.

Then came Fitzgerald’s lawsuit, a $130 million claim for wrongful termination and defamation. A trial would have ripped the lid off Northwestern’s hypocrisy. Discovery would have compelled Schill, Gragg, and other university leaders to testify under oath as to why this culture had been allowed to fester. What did they know, and when did they know it?

Why were player complaints ignored or buried? How could hazing rituals that openly involved sexual assault have existed for years without administrative knowledge? Those questions terrified Northwestern. And so the university did what elite institutions do best: it wrote a huge check to make the problem go away.

The settlement’s terms are confidential, but it is reasonable to assume Fitzgerald walked away with tens of millions: enough to cover the remainder of his contract and then some. Northwestern avoids trial, Fitzgerald avoids the risk of losing in court, and both sides call it “satisfactory.” But nothing about this is satisfactory for the athletes who endured the humiliation of those locker rooms. Nothing is sufficient for the public, who deserve transparency instead of hush money.

This is the template for moral bankruptcy in modern college athletics. Protect the brand, protect the donors, and if all else fails, protect yourselves with money. The athletes who actually suffered, the ones who were coerced, degraded, and assaulted, were only taken seriously after going public and filing lawsuits of their own. Northwestern settled those, too, preferring confidentiality over accountability.

And yet, Schill remained in office until he resigned in September 2025. Gragg has been promoted to a cushy post. The Board of Trustees continues to act as if cutting checks is the same as cutting out a cancer. Fitzgerald may or may not coach again, but he will at least cash his settlement. The young men whose stories brought this scandal to light remain the only ones who have paid a real price.

Northwestern’s slogan is “And is in our DNA.” What is truly in its DNA is cowardice: cowardice in leadership, cowardice in oversight, cowardice in confronting the cruelty and sexual abuse that flourished on its watch. This scandal should not be remembered as just a black mark on one football program. It should be remembered as a warning: that when prestigious universities run athletics as semi-professional businesses, young athletes become expendable, and institutional honor becomes a commodity bought and sold with settlements.
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The Fitzgerald deal was not closure. It was a cover-up. And Northwestern’s leaders, Schill, Gragg, and their board, have shown the country exactly what their priorities are. The tragedy is not that Fitzgerald got his payout. The tragedy is that Northwestern still thinks writing checks is equivalent to doing the right thing.