HAZING IS NOT HORSEPLAY, AS SOMEONE SHOULD TELL FITZGERALD’S LAWYER
A legal attempt to win as much as $130 million for the fired Northwestern coach doesn’t acknowledge the obvious: Dan Webb is 78 and might not understand the abuse of “real hazing” in college football
My concern, as I carry in most age-brainwashed cases, is that Pat Fitzgerald’s attorney doesn’t know the definition of “hazing” in a 2023 backdrop. Dan Webb is 78 and certainly looked determined Thursday as he entered a news conference at Winston & Strawn, a Chicago legal firm hired by the former Northwestern football coach. With his left arm, he held a large orange file that suggested he’s going to win an ample amount of his $130 million in a lawsuit.
And then Webb opened his mouth.
“If you put young men in a locker room, do they sometimes engage in behavior that someone could say on a given day they were being difficult with each other? Players sometimes do that in every locker room in America,” he said. “They're going to say they didn't see any significant hazing other than horseplay ... between young men in the locker room. We’ll find out, was there any real hazing at Northwestern? I doubt it.”
Difficult with each other? What in the dye of Webb’s blue tie is “real” hazing? Is he about to explain what hazing is and isn’t so his aggrieved client can win tens of millions? As the university quickly reminded in a statement, “Student-athletes across a range of years corroborated these findings, showing beyond question that hazing — which included nudity and sexualized acts — took place on Fitzgerald’s watch.” Unless those nude games and coerced sex pranks were lies, including orders from upperclassmen “dry-humping” a player in a dark locker room, this would be a septuagenarian’s vision of behind-the-scenes goofery that may have worked in the 20th century but can’t function in progressive millenniums.
He’d better be careful if he enters a courtroom filled with Black players who want to take down the white powerhouses — including Fitzgerald, who’d worked there as head coach since 2006 — at a frilly university. To hear Webb, he believes NU president Michael Schill buckled on a previous judgment to suspend Fitzgerald for only two weeks without pay after a player described “egregious and vile and inhumane behavior” to The Daily Northwestern. No doubt Schill mocked his own office by allowing a published article a day later to change his mind, but when the fireable offense is hazing, his vague indecision isn’t as important as the final call. The president and trustees run the operation. Not Webb or Fitzgerald.
“It appears President Schill didn’t like the heat, and he read the article, and he said ‘I’m going to breach the contract,’ ” Webb said. “The fact he was terminated based on no rational reasons or facts whatsoever, the fact they’ve gone out and destroyed his reputation as one of the best football coaches in America, based on no legitimate reason or evidence, it’s disgraceful. It’s despicable conduct on behalf of Northwestern. My client and his family are entitled to their day in court for justice.”
No, it’s about Schill ultimately rejecting an offense that should be left far in the past. He didn’t breach Fitzgerald’s contract. He changed his own mind to make sure hazing wouldn’t happen in the future. This case won’t go to trial because Webb and Fitzgerald don’t want hazing stories told for the record. They are trying to win as much money as possible, including $68 million in owed salary and $62 million in future earnings, before he skips away to the NFL as an assistant coach. The school didn’t ruin his career, contrary to what Webb said in accusing NU of “callous and outrageous misconduct.” He ruined it himself, with the school saying Thursday that he “had the responsibility to know hazing was occurring and to stop it. He failed to do so.” Meanwhile, former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is conducting a review of the athletic department in recent years, including the dismissal of baseball coach Jim Foster for bullying.
The Big Ten announced its 2024 football schedule on Thursday. The bad news: The Wildcats play on the road at Washington and Michigan, both positioned to reach the College Football Playoff this season, and play another contender at home in Ohio State. It’s a reminder of the hell this program faces in the future. As I’ve said, they don’t need to play in the Big Ten, which probably feels similarly.
For now, Northwestern must decide what it will pay a disgraced coach. This case will continue to hamper a school on the lake that assumed, in the greatest days of Fitzgerald, he was taking underdog status to higher places. Little did we know what was happening in Fitzgerald’s training camp.
“People will think there’s a chance to get a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, and they will file lawsuits that are not merited,” Webb said. “... I have no way to know until we get into discovery what the details are … the truth will only emerge if we take depositions under oath.”
Dan Webb is well-regarded in his craft. That said, he might want to study some “real hazing” cases. At 78, how would he know the difference?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.