Former Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald has settled his lawsuit with the university, according to a Thursday morning report from ESPN’s Pete Thamel. Terms of the settlement were not revealed.
“It was a lengthy process, but we’re very satisfied with the terms of the settlement,” said Bryant Harlan of Excel Sports, Fitzgerald’s agent. “Coach Fitzgerald’s is eager to resume his coaching career.”
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Fitzgerald initially fielded a $130 million lawsuit against Northwestern in October 2023 for wrongful termination, following the football team’s hazing scandal that summer which led to his removal from the program after 16 seasons.
On May 6, Northwestern settled its 34 remaining lawsuits filed against by former NU football players over allegations of hazing. The financials behind these settlements are also unknown.
Since 2023, Fitzgerald has served as a volunteer assistant for Loyola Academy high school in Illinois.
Northwestern University has since responded, noting that “the evidence uncovered during extensive discovery did not establish that any player reported hazing to Coach Fitzgerald or that Coach Fitzgerald condoned or directed any hazing.” It also maintained that its “number one priority is the healthy and safety of all members of its community, including our student athletes.”
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In the page-long release via law firm Winston & Strawn, Fitzgerald maintained that he neither knew about or directed any of the hazing incidents that occurred during his 17 seasons as Northwestern’s head football coach, but he publicly acknowledged for the first time that some hazing took place.
“Through discovery, I learned that some hazing did occur in the football program at Northwestern,” said Fitzgerald in the statement. “I am extremely disappointed that members of the team engaged in 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.”
An anonymous Northwestern football player first reported incidents of hazing to the school in late November of 2022, and the school subsequently hired Maggie Hickey of ArentFox Schiff to conduct an external investigation.
On July 7, 2022, the University announced that Fitzgerald was suspended for two weeks without pay after Hickey’s investigation concluded that hazing had occurred in that football program and that knowledge of these incidents was “widespread across football players.” An executive summary released by Northwestern detailing her findings concluded that the coaching staff was not aware of these incidents but that “there had been significant opportunities to discover and report the hazing conduct.”
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On July 8, the Daily Northwestern released a story released a story in which two former Northwestern football players alleged that Fitzgerald “may have known that hazing took place.” The story included specific and graphic allegations of hazing, including the practice of “running,” where younger players “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.”
In the Daily’s article, one of the former players alleged that Fitzgerald would make a signal known within the team as the “shrek clap” during practices that was associated with the action of “running.” The Daily’s source said he believed that some players within the program saw Fitzgerald’s signal as “encouraging” the alleged hazing incidents.
Fitzgerald was fired on July 10, 2022.
Northwestern President Michael Schill said that the decision to remove Fitzgerald was “mine and mine alone” in a statement sent out to Northwestern community members via email.
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In the statement, Schill added, “the head coach is ultimately responsible for the culture of his team. The hazing we investigated was widespread and clearly not a secret within the program, providing Coach Fitzgerald with the opportunity to learn what was happening.”
