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Pat Fitzgerald the coach of Northwestern was fired for hazing. He’s been there close to 30 years in total as a player then assistant coach and for 17 years HC of NW. A former player reported hazing at NW. Also supposedly said he exagerated and wanted to get him fired. Initially he was suspended without pay for 2 weeks then more articles were posted in the NW student paper. He has like a 10 year 50 million contract he is in year 2 of. NW says they aren’t paying so lawyers will figure stuff out.
He claims he didn’t know about the hazing. I’m going to say that is bs and as a former player he’s been the victim and perpetrator.
This is the money quote on the worst thing that happened:
“The former player said he reported his experiences to the University in late November 2022. He alleges that much of the team’s hazing centered around a practice dubbed “running,” which was used to punish team members, primarily freshman, for mistakes made on the field and in practice.
If a player was selected for “running,” the player who spoke to The Daily said, they would be restrained by a group of 8-10 upperclassmen dressed in various “Purge-like” masks, who would then begin “dry-humping” the victim in a dark locker room. “
Main article with some more details in NW student paper (bottom links to more related articles).
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2023/07/08/top-stories/former-nu-football-player-details-hazing-allegations-after-coach-suspension/
Ok so 18-22 year old behavior that is now very societal inappropriate especially for a solidly best of the not elite schools.
I’ll front that I had a couple years where I was bullied. That can look the same as young male team building doing stupid stuff but there is a difference between hurting someone and just some male behavior and I don’t know the line. I do know good would look the same as bad when written about in modern media.
I’m going to compare this to a few other things.
I went to Notre Dame we had this dorm who everyone called gay (I’m old enough where you could say that). They were zahm. They were known for having a naked run thru campus and supposedly did some other gay stuff like that. But every zahm guy I ever met were really close with their people. (That dorm was canceled since I graduated)
I think Stanford use to have a lot of naked runs before it got not fun.
Miami Hurricanes football team had a “7th floor crew” some nfl players in it and sounds like it’s about stealing girls and running trains on girls as a team. And really not that long ago. Decent rap video. Some how still up on YouTube. This is more about the standards that get you fired now versus then or at good football school versus smart kid bad football school.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9ujKxpAvLKg
UGA has a really bad street racing problem that led to two dead (there’s a fixer and a lot more complaints not just one incident that ended bad).
Many of you probably have other examples of this, my guess is this wasn’t hardcore hurt the person hazing. This feels like it fits in the young men do some silly stuff society doesn’t let them do anymore. And not in the Joe Paterno DC was raping little kids area.
I feel like you have a few different kinds of bullying/hazing. You have the kind where everyone picks on the weakest member and we should get rid of that. Some reason I think of Jordan and assume he was crazy and bullied everyone and it sort of got guys to perform better and that’s ok. And then you have some weird young male traditions which I think on net are good. But tough to tell the difference.
So I have some sort of inside information because I was chatting with someone from NW's athletic department at a birthday party over the weekend. He was pretty insistent that the suspension was going to be extended to include at least some of the season. Apparently there was significant pressure from the non-athletic portions of the university to send a message. As context, Northwestern as a semi-elite university has a professorship that is pretty hostile to sports in general, and the football team most as all. They generally, would like to be rid of football, and resent the massive new donation that is going to a stadium that they think, instead, should be going to something that they value.
That’s a very old university power game which I guess is now playing new social games.
I wander how much NW is going to have to pay out to the victims who spent a couple minutes each rubbing balls with their teammates. I guess if your a former player you might as well declare it rape and asks for a few million each.
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