{"id":275776,"date":"2025-11-06T19:45:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T19:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/275776\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T19:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T19:45:08","slug":"pat-fitzgerald-reveals-his-one-regret-from-northwestern-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/275776\/","title":{"rendered":"Pat Fitzgerald reveals his one regret from Northwestern scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Northwestern<\/a> head coach Pat Fitzgerald<\/a> was a Wildcat through and through before he was fired in July 2023. Fitzgerald, who played for the program from 1993-96 and coached the program from 2006-2022, was let go after an investigation concluded that he was aware of hazing incidents that took place around the program.<\/p>\n

His firing actually came after he had agreed to serve a two-week offseason suspension, at which point the coach hired outside legal counsel. Following his firing, Fitzgerald sued the school for $130 million. Northwestern reportedly settled the lawsuit last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the three months since the lawsuit was settled, Fitzgerald has returned to the national spotlight as he looks to begin coaching at the FBS level once again. He joined ESPN\u2018s Rece Davis on this week\u2019s edition of the \u2018College GameDay Podcast<\/a>,\u2019 where he revealed that his one regret from the situation that resulted in him losing his job.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think as the head coach, and again, that\u2019s why I accepted a two-week suspension,\u201d Fitzgerald said. \u201cI take full responsibility. Never said that I did anything wrong or the staff, but that\u2019s what the leader does. I took responsibility and I took the two-week suspension as the leader to say \u2018we\u2019re going to get this fixed\u2019. We firmly still believed that we had cutting-edge in the way you should monitor things.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have three boys, and I wish I knew what they did every minute of every day. I don\u2019t. But we feel like we educated our sons and educated our sons to do the right things continually to do the right things, and I feel we did the same in our program with our administration and the University.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a zero-tolerance policy for hazing within the program. I educated the guys. We used our resources within the athletic department within the University, and as I look back, there were some behaviors by the guys that I\u2019ve seen after we\u2019ve gone through the investigation and litigation process. The behavior was inappropriate. Just like other issues that arose over my 17 years in leadership, we dealt with those head on. Guys were held accountable. When there were staff issues, guys were held accountable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you didn\u2019t live up to the standard of being a Wildcat, you were gonna be held accountable. I was looking forward to doing that, but I was not given that opportunity. That is a regret I have. I was looking forward to doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greg McElroy tabbed Fitzgerald as candidate for Penn State job<\/p>\n

Over his 17 seasons in charge, Fitzgerald led Northwestern to a 110-101 (65-76) record with a 5-5 bowl record. This included a 35-19 win over Auburn<\/a> in the 2021 Citrus Bowl, capping off a 7-2 COVID-shortened season in 2020 in which the Wildcats finished ranked No. 10 in the final AP Poll.<\/p>\n

ESPN\u2019s\u00a0Greg McElroy\u00a0revealed last month that he believes that Fitzgerald is a name to watch in the\u00a0Penn State<\/a>\u00a0coaching search. Fitzgerald did \u2018more with less\u2019, and McElroy noted this could be an interesting partnership with Penn State.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust throwing it out there. Remember the name Pat Fitzgerald, just saying,\u201d\u00a0McElroy said on\u00a0Always College Football<\/a>. \u201cRemember the name. With what transpired, and he got paid, actually, by Northwestern because of how that all went down. He\u2019s available, has Big Ten experience, has done more with less for a very long time, which is the exact opposite of what James Franklin<\/a> did.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did less with more. So we\u2019ll see what happens. But that\u2019s a name, by the way. Little nugget. Keep it in (mind).\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald was a Wildcat through and through before he was fired in July…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,67091,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-275776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-pat-fitzgerald","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}