It seems to this reporter that not only did the football coach have to know what was going on, but he subjectively encouraged it.
The Northwestern campus is gorgeous on this fine summer day.
You almost can understand why it costs $75,000 a year to go here and why the acceptance rate is a rarefied 7%.
In short, Northwestern is the Big Ten’s Ivy League school.
Then there’s the football program.
Pat Fitzgerald, the head coach these last 17 years, was fired at dinnertime Monday. The deed was done by a president, athletic department and PR staff that might as well be from Gooberville, USA.
Ivy League? No, bush league.
The hazing perversity that went on in the football ‘‘brotherhood’’ — and please forget the pathetically arrogant and illogical denial letter from ‘‘the ENTIRE team’’ — finally did in a coach who likely is more suited to be an Armed Forces recruiter than a builder of college men.
The darkened-room ‘‘dry-humping’’ punishment for unlucky underclassmen by older, mask-wearing teammates was supposed to build camaraderie. And to be a laugh riot.
Well, that’s Hazing 101, people, and it’s about as funny and bonding as beating a friend with a stick because he’s your pal.
And there was more, even uglier stuff, sexualized and demeaning, as hazing so often is. Lots of players knew about it, saw it, experienced it and came forward to corroborate it.
That Northwestern tried to slip in the news of Fitzgerald’s initial two-week suspension without pay on a Friday afternoon is classic information suppression. News often vanishes over weekends, is dead and buried by Monday.
