Northwestern and former head coach Pat Fitzgerald agreed to a settlement on Thursday that ends a wrongful termination lawsuit Fitzgerald filed after Northwestern fired him following hazing allegations in his program.
In a statement released Thursday, Northwestern acknowledged that Fitzgerald did not know about the hazing in the football program and that he never “condoned or directed any hazing.” The university also said that when Fitzgerald became aware of the hazing going on within his program in July 2023, he was “incredibly upset and saddened by the negative impact this conduct had on players within the program.”
Fitzgerald filed a $130 million lawsuit in October 2023 after being fired months after the hazing allegations were made public. The longtime coach of the Wildcats always maintained that he had no knowledge of hazing in his program.
“For the past two years, I have engaged in a process of extensive fact and expert discovery, which showed what I have known and said all along—that I had no knowledge of hazing ever occurring in the Northwestern football program, and that I never directed or encouraged hazing in any way,” Fitzgerald said in a statement released through his attorneys.
His statement continued: “Through discovery, I learned that some hazing did occur in the football program at Northwestern. I am extremely disappointed that members of the team engaged in this behavior and that no one reported it to me, so that I could have alerted Northwestern’s Athletic Department and administrators, stopped the inappropriate behavior, and taken every necessary step to protect Northwestern’s student athletes.”
The terms of the settlement will not be made public, Northwestern announced in its statement.
The settlement marks the end of a long relationship between Northwestern and Fitzgerald, who starred as a linebacker for the Wildcats from 1993–96 before becoming the school’s head coach in July 2006. His 17 years as the school’s head football coach were among the most successful in school history, as he led Northwestern to a 110–101 record, including a 5–5 mark in bowl games.
When Northwestern’s hazing scandal broke in 2023, Fitzgerald’s time as leader of the football program came to a shocking end. Fitzgerald’s firing followed an independent investigation into the allegations by a former Illinois inspector general. The investigation began in December 2022 after an anonymous email address sent a complaint at the end of the 2022 season, according to an executive summary of the investigation released by Northwestern.
The investigation revealed 11 players, past and present, said hazing was ongoing in the program, Northwestern president Michael Schill said in a July 2023 letter. However, in that same letter, Schill added that the investigator didn’t find “any credible evidence that Coach Fitzgerald himself knew about it,” and Fitzgerald has denied any knowledge of hazing in the program.
Fitzgerald was initially suspended for two weeks before he was fired. His lawyers contended that he had an agreement with school leadership that he would not face additional punishment beyond that suspension, but was then fired days later.
In his statement on Thursday, Fitzgerald called his firing the result of a “rush to judgment in the media” and said reports that he “knew about and directed hazing are false.”
“Though I maintain Northwestern had no legal basis to terminate my employment for cause under the terms of my Employment Agreement, in the interest of resolving this matter and, in particular, to relieve my family from the stress of ongoing litigation, Northwestern and I have agreed to a settlement, and I am satisfied with the terms of the settlement,” Fitzgerald said.
