A Friday news dump failed to get the job done.
We weren’t in the proverbial room with Northwestern president Michael Schill whenever it was that he decided — presumably with input from others including athletic director Derrick Gragg, and possibly coach Pat Fitzgerald himself — to suspend Fitzgerald for two weeks without pay after an independent investigation into alleged hazing within the Wildcats football program.
We can imagine what they might have been thinking, though. First, dump the news of the suspension on a Friday and the public might hardly even notice it, right? After that, a beautiful summer weekend on the North Shore. Perhaps a sunny stroll past the Baha’i Temple? An evening campfire at Dempster Beach?
“By the time Monday rolls around,” someone might have suggested, “this whole thing probably will have blown over.”
Alas, no such luck. Instead, Evanston became the eye of a storm of controversy Schill and the school must not have seen coming. Student journalists from The Daily Northwestern broke a massive story Saturday detailing allegations brought by a former player of such lewd acts of hazing — mostly by veteran players against newbies — writers from across the land who’d never dreamed of putting the words “dry” and “hump” together in a story suddenly were doing just that. What did Fitzgerald really know? Will he survive this scandal? Where is the silent Gragg in all this, hiding under his desk?
By late Saturday night, Schill had issued a new statement addressed to members of the Northwestern community in which he admitted he “may have erred in weighing the appropriate sanction for Coach Fitzgerald.
