That’s a great name. I really admire what he’s done at Eastern.
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Creighton also beat Arizona State in Tempe last season.
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I’m not close to the Northwestern program at all, but I can’t help but thinking this type of scandal might have created an existential crisis for the Northwestern athletics program if it weren’t for the huge amount of money the B1G media contract will be providing. If not for that NU might well be considering a decision to de-emphasize like original B1G program UChicago made in a bygone era. But big money has changed everything.
Bruce Feldman published an article on The Athletic this morning. He has nine names on his short list. One is Chris Creighton. One commenter mentioned Tim Albin and one mentioned Chuck Martin.
I’m a big fan of letting due process play out. In my life in Corporate America, I’ve seen some shit done by bosses who want to get rid of an employee so they over-blow stuff to “justify” their firing or re-assignment, and by employees who hate their bosses or hate their job so they’re gonna exact revenge. I’ve seen that MOST of this is due to a personality conflict. To wit:
*I worked with this one lady a few years back who was, quite frankly, nuts – she lied about people on our team to our boss, then lied to our boss’s boss when nothing was done to her liking.
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Another co-worker tried to bring up sexual harassment charges that were completely unfounded bc a male co-worker was promoted to the position she wanted.
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Yet another co-worker went to HR because he didn’t like the job he was brought on to do, and successfully got his boss fired bc he overheard him dropping an f-bomb while sitting alone in his cube, said it was a hostile work environment and gave his 2 weeks notice to go back to his old job.
In a large enterprise, you have various people with different agendas. Did hazing occur? Maybe. Dunno. Is it possible that someone had an ax to grind over playing time, or practices being too hard, or just didn’t like the coach? Yeah, that’s possible too. Affording due process is the right way to go.
Also, Northwestern is gonna be hurting from this for years. Financially this will cost them millions, and also figure that a big portion of athletes are going to leave the team.
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These kinds of messes are extremely costly. Certain legal firms feast off them. Case in point is the recent $8 million a basketball hazing scandal just cost NMSU. And the Aggies don’t have the deep pockets Northwestern does. I posted an AP article about it earlier.
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Well I am glad NW listened to me! 
Now here is who they should give strong consideration to as their next HC: former Stanford coach, David Shaw. Still relatively young (50), ran a clean program, NFL experience, and most importantly, knows how to recruit to a school with high academic standards. Were his records great the last few years? No. And that may be an obvious knock against him. But I am at least getting him on my short list.
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I love David Shaw, too, but I don’t think he has significant Midwest recruiting ties.
Northwestern had considerable success with three former Miami head coaches - named Pont, Parseghian and Walker.
They conducted a six-month investigation run by outside counsel that found 11 current and former players who reported hazing. I’m not sure what more process is due.
I’m not so sure with a school like NW midwestern ties are as important. They have to recruit on a more national scale due to their academic standards. For instance, Stanford yearly only has about 150 kids they can recruit over the entire country. My guess is NW isn’t too much different. In 2023 9 of their 19 kids were outside what would traditionally be called the midwest. So about half in and half outside the midwest.
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Mike Elmo turned around Duke immediately and has experience at Notre Dame and BG, he’d be a stellar hire.
If NU goes with the interim route this season with a permanent hire made later in the fall, it’ll shape up for their debut to come against us in 2024. I highly doubt Chuck is the guy, but it would make for a fun matchup.
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There were about that many that came out in support of Joe Paterno too. And it might not be kids, but there’s a lot of sexual assault in those hazing allegations. I’ll leave the possibility that he didn’t know like other players said, but at some point that’s no excuse. You’re the head of the program, you need to know what’s going on.
Elko and Creighton would both be good candidates for Northwestern job.
Aren’t you one a them law-talkin’ guys? Innocent until proven guilty, right to confront your accusers and defend yourself, etc,.?
Google “Tara Reade”. Google “Al Franken”. Then let’s come back, mmm’kay?
True. That’s happening everywhere. Even Miami’s football roster is now about 70% out of state kids.
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Not sure Northwestern is a better job than Duke now.
This isn’t a criminal court of law. This is civil between an employee and employer. And at a certain point you can’t be the one making your employer look bad. And when they investigate and find that the allegations were true, true enough to fire with cause, there’s an issue.
Fitz will have his chance to counter (and it sounds like he is since he’s owed over $40mil). But when he does that everything is going to come out to the public. So either he’s confident there’s no cause, or he’s hoping a settlement is reached before everything comes out so he can get a fraction of that money.
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The guy who had like 8 public accusers? The guy who had contemporaneous allegations going back decades? The guy who had multiple accusers with photographic evidence? The guy whose staff had a formal policy of requiring a chaperone every time he was with members of the public because he had such a reputation for acting inappropriately?
No, seriously, what more process is due? Does there need to be a public hearing in which evidence is taken? If, for example, his contract provides for tenure-like protections, then perhaps he’s supposed to get a hearing. But absent something like that, this is just a personnel decision, and one that Northwestern made after a whole heck of a lot deeper investigation than most personnel decisions.
This kind of explains things
https://twitter.com/andy_staples/status/1678591372893331458?s=46&t=6o6QN4eHhEVbIIqyNNUj5g
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Dunno his contract, but it seems like NU wants to sweep this under the rug and be done with it. I’d vote for an Administrative Leave and investigate this, then announce the findings, but just to go off hearsay and someone who has been cited as having an axe to grind seems reckless. Regardless, Northwestern Football will be baaaaaaaaad for a long time.
Re: Al Franken: When the accusers were announced, it was a GOP smear job to get him to resign, led by Roger Stone. When the truth came out that he didn’t do any of the crap that Stone tried to pin on him, people like Kirstin Gillibrand had a dozen eggs on their faces.