I think Chuck is theoretically capable of putting together a team that can win 10 games. He got to 8 in 2019 after all with a 1-3 OOC and blowing off the second half at Ball State, he could pull it off. The odds it happens in reality are pretty low, not impossible.
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In the The Daily Northwestern article linked above the President indicates he did not weigh Fitzgerald’s responsibility as HC heavily enough to protect student athletes. That does not indicate that he overreacted but that he under reacted and that Fitzgerald might get a stronger punishment.
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I think you’re right. I must have read the other one the wrong way.
Jon Greenberg posted an article earlier today on The Athletic calling for Fitz to be fired. Here’s one paragraph:
“What does that say about Fitzgerald’s leadership that his program, the one he’s been in charge of for 17 years, now requires a locker-room monitor to make sure his players don’t abuse their teammates? How can Fitzgerald look at himself in the mirror and say he’s still doing a good job?”
Here’s another article;
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Huge News!
Could CM possibly end up on their short list. He just beat them last fall. Has roots and recruiting experience in Chicagoland. No hint of any improprieties at Grand Valley, Notre Dame or Miami.
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No. Look at his record. Zero chance.
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Northwestern is building the new football stadium up there. It’ll be someone big
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Remember the only mens head coach in miami sports that has won an mac titlevis Martin
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Ok Chuck, there you go. A P5 reclamation project is available. Go win 10 games and you can get your name on the short list.
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I guess we’ll see if the Power 2/Little 8 formulation is true or not. If Northwestern pulls a P12/B12/ACC coach, that would be a huge step toward everyone but the B1G and the SEC being out of it.
If I was Northwestern AD I would probably consider Paul Chryst.
Familiar with the recruiting territory. Wisconsin a pretty good academic school. Knows the Big 10.
Overall record of 86-45 at Pitt and Wisconsin. Only losing record at Wisconsin was last year when he was fired at 2-3.
If you want to go for the big splash take a swing at Kliff Kingsbury. Not sure he (or his girlfriend) would want anything to do with Chicago.
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I think I’d tag an interim coach for this year and do a proper audit of both the program and get better candidates after the season shakes out. They might end up losing some assistant coaches as well. It’s gonna be a mess for a while.
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Even if this hazing thing never happened Northwestern was still looking at a bad season. The program’s situation has changed for the worse in a very short amount of time, they reacted slowly to NIL and also lost a few veteran assistants to take them from competitive to lousy. This will only make it worse on the field.
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Repost from the CSN board:
“FWIW: there are over a hundred current and former players coming out in support of Fitzgerald. The word is they know who the whistleblower is, there’s a recording of him saying his goal was to take down Fitzgerald and that he would embellish and lie to do it, and the whistleblower was a huge problem in the program who had a history of being a pathological liar. They are also saying Fitzgerald meet with every single player 1-on-1 throughout the season and he 100% would’ve done something if it was brought to his attention - but it never was.
This is going to absolutely split that program, as what the overwhelming majority of current/former players think is in direct opposition to the court of public opinion.”
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An interim coach would be what you would expect here based on past practices.
However, in the new world of college football that could also mean a big risk.
Transfer portal and the early signing date have changed things big time.
Going for an interim leaves the program in limbo for a year.
How many current players transfer out? How do you attract those in transfer portal? That is compounded at Northwestern with the high academic requirements.
An interim makes it hard to recruit the 2024 class where most commitments are made over the next couple of months.
I would not like to be that AD.
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On one hand, current/former players would know the truth of what was happening the best - but in the other hands they’d also have been the ones doing it, so eh
Yes, but remember, I’ve only ever been a “fantasy” football coach. If I was the head coach I’d be like Dennis Hopper in Hoosiers!
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Well Northwestern’s president released a statement saying 11 current and former players confirmed hazing during the investigation, so there’s more to it than this one guy. (Of course, if the investigation turned up 11 players who said there was hazing, that leads to questions about why Fitz was just given a two-week suspension during the deadest period of summer.)
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Wait you’re telling me that all the former players who participated in the hazing aren’t immediately admitting what they did was wrong and are instead smearing the person who finally called out the nonsense? What a shocker.
Ask Kain Colter and he will tell you what’s it’s like to be ostracized from the NU program for standing up against the program. Dude got shit on by Fitz and his minions for trying to unionize NU football. Not surprising the same is happening here.
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I don’t necessarily agree with the poster’s conclusions, there needs to be a very low tolerance with this kind of thing if it’s legit. I’m not sure if the investigation was completely clean though; here’s another post from the same poster responding to a very similar point:
“It’s a huge mess with a lot of grey area. Ultimately, 11 people confirmed hazing took place. At the same time, the initial whistleblower’s motivations were completely blown-up (there’s supposedly a recording of him admitting to lying and embellishing with the goal of getting Fitz fired and “put in jail”) and some elements of what he told the Daily Northwestern were embellished/lies while other elements were true.
But the president won’t release the investigative report, which opens everything up to endless speculation. If he’d just release the report, this wouldn’t be a fraction of the mess it’s become with it dividing the whole school.
On the Northwestern pay board, people are saying that some board members are livid with the president. Of course, the president wouldn’t make this decision if he didn’t have the support of other board trustees as well. So like the school, it looks like the BOT is completely divided.”
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If i were hiring to fill the NW head coaching position my first call would be to Chris Creighton, the current head coach at Eastern Michigan University. I would argue that , when he took over, it was not only the worst job in the MAC but all of FBS.
In the decade he has been there he has made them a consistent bowl participant and, if memory serves, he had 3 road wins against Big 10 teams from 2017-19. That is more than Illinois. Rutgers and Indiana had in that time span.
His prior jobs were at Drake and Wabash and he won at both. He is accustomed to taking programs with relatively little history or resources and winning.
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