Northwestern football team abuse was so widespread, coach must have known, player’s attorneys allege

A day after a former Northwestern University football player filed the first a lawsuit alleging hazing and sexual abuse on its team, his lawyers said the abuse was so widespread that coach Patrick Fitzgerald must’ve known about it.

“The head football coach knows about everything that happens with his football program,” attorney Parker Stinar told reporters Wednesday morning.

“And this wasn’t just one single event. We’re talking about probably hundreds, if not thousands of events of abuse, harassment or sexual assault during his tenure,” he said.

The anonymous former player filed suit on Tuesday, a week after Fitzgerald was fired when a university investigation found allegations of hazing and racial discrimination by 11 current or former players. Complaints, the investigation found, were “largely supported by the evidence.” It remains the first lawsuit filed in the wake of the scandal.

The abuse included “forced participation, nudity and sexualized acts of a degrading nature,” University President Michael Schill wrote.

Stinar and attorney Patrick Salvi Jr. said they have spoken with another football player on the team and will be filing a separate lawsuit Wednesday with similar allegations.

At least a half dozen other players have retained lawyers. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump and the Chicago-based Levin & Perconti law firm also held a press conference Wednesday. That event, at a downtown hotel, included four of 15 players who have hired the firm to represent them. Crump, who has represented the families of George Floyd and Ahmad Arbury in litigation, and his co-counsel Steve Levin, said they still are gathering evidence and fielding calls from dozens more players, including athletes on the Northwestern softball and baseball teams.

Fitzgerald’s attorney, Dan Webb, has ripped the lawsuit for failing to cite “any specific facts or evidence.” Tuesday night, Webb said that “we will aggressively defend against these allegations with facts and evidence.”

Salvi and Stinar alleged the culture of abuse permeated the school’s entire athletic department. It infiltrated the baseball, softball, volleyball and cheerleader programs, they said.

“This is an institution that permitted this behavior: sexual harassment, sexual assault, racial discrimination. This is an athletic program that permitted it. And this is a school that allowed it,” Stinar said.

Most of the attention has been on the fallout from the investigation of abuse into the football team, but a simultaneous university investigation found that baseball coach Jim Foster also engaged in abuse and bullying behavior. The university fired Foster on July 13 after the investigation came to light.

The attorneys questioned the university leadership’s transparency, and called on it to release the full, unedited investigation.

They alleged the law firm retained by the university to investigate the abuse, ArentFox Schiff LLP, was close to the school’s general counsel.

The school has only publicly released a summary of the investigation, which revealed that a student-athlete anonymously complained of hazing in the university’s football program on Nov. 30, 2022. The investigation into that complaint found that “participation in or knowledge of the hazing activities was widespread across football players.” 

In response to the investigation, the university placed Patrick Fitzgerald on a two-week suspension without pay and discontinued Northwestern’s football training camp in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

A day later, the university’s student-run paper, The Daily Northwestern, published an article quoting an anonymous student-football player who detailed allegations of the football team’s hazing traditions.

That same day, Schill released a statement placing blame on Fitzpatrick. Schill fired Fitzpatrick two days later.