OT: Let’s check in on Northwestern
Holy geez, somehow it is getting worse. Attorneys now allege hazing in multiple sports, including a Dan Snyder-esque scheme to require cheerleaders to mingle with donors. One of the defendants is the current ACC commissioner (past NW AD).
https://apple.news/A19QjwcNeSs2rH0-xIZGEaA
And here is a story alleging that a current NW coach on the football team personally witnessed the hazing:
https://apple.news/AK_uiIZODRoGMNMyp6m1Irw
When it rains it pours, I guess.
So, you’re implying that the B1G might see another school follow the U Chicago path - and, eventually, open up another spot for expansion.. a new team to join the B1G?
The most significant aspect of this, IMO, is gender. The hazing activities weren’t limited to mens teams - but also included at least three sports related “women’s” groups / teams - softball, volleyball, and cheerleading.
This is simply unacceptable at any / level… period.
The stance and approach of the Board of Directors / Trustees.. will be interesting.
P.S. - the article and OP note that cheerleaders “mingled” with donors. Candidly, this does not meet my definition of hazing. If the cheerleaders visit The Wilson Club (a nice, private dining area in Welsh Ryan arena - which is adjacent to Ryan Field) - and met alumni - I don’t see the problem. If other activities occurred, or were implied - that’s a different story.
The cheerleader (lawsuit in year three at the moment) alleges sexual assault (groping specifically) by donors at these events.
Thank you. I wasn’t aware of this. I’ve been in the Wilson Club - and, have informally met Northwestern coaches there - strictly social conversations.
The cheerleaders issue is interesting. I’m not condoning any actions. I just wonder if these situations were institutional in nature - or - civil matters between the donor and the cheerleaders. Was this suggested, supported, or encouraged by Northwestern’s administration? We may find out.
The cheerleader story is literally 3 years old. They had an AD for like a week because of it and then he resigned because the story wouldn't go away.
They're rehashing old stories.
Basically, like a ton of schools...the cheerleaders would visit donor lots during pregame tailgating and on bowl trips they would attend the donor pep rallies that are typically a bunch of people at whatever restaurant is that school's "official" restaurant of the trip. Michigan does this, everyone does (the pep rally...not the inappropriate touching).
A couple cheerleaders alleged that donors got handsy and acted inappropriately and that grew into, the university is pimping us out.
They also felt uncomfortable at basketball games dancing in front of the donor/courtside seat holders. So they changed that.
Even the mascot alleged someone of touching him inappropriately over his costume.
(opinion: I could totally see some drunk idiot thinking it's funny to grope a fury Wildcat mascot...people are fucking stupid)
Anyway, now the NW cheerleaders travel everywhere with security and they're not allowed to attend donor functions.
We are at the point where every lawyer is going to dig up every story from the past 20 years, even ones that have been "resolved" (like the cheerleaders issue).
I'm sure next they find that a cheerleader claimed the head coach was racist...so NW fired the cheer coach. This was also about 3 years ago...possibly a little older, after the murder of George Floyd, when social justice had the nation's full attention.
There was also a hazing allegation in the volleyball program, I remember their head coach was suspended. It was something about making a couple of student-athletes who were under aged drinking run...when you can't punish players by singling them out and putting them through exhaustive workouts.
All of this is documented and old news.
Doesn't make it right or excusable...it was deplorable then and still is, but it's not like something new is being uncovered.
Well if Michigan does this they should stop. It’s demeaning and just begging for trouble. A bunch of boozed up, entitled rich guys around young attractive women is a bad idea
This is such a fascinating issue. To suggest that putting a group of people who are selected by the university for the express purpose of increasing enthusiasm about the athletic programs in front of the public is ... complicated.
Forgive me — I'm not all meaning to disagree with you, really. Just ... the same proposition you put forward — let's not put young attractive women in front of boozed up entitled rich guys — seems to rule out a lot of cheerleader activities.
And ... I'm ok with that. Even in my teens and college years I never really understood what cheerleaders were for, except as a holdover from a time where that was really the only athletic-related role that was open to them. Now that that's no longer really the case ... maybe we should do away with sexualized girls with pom-poms and short skirts designed to entertained the men during time-outs?
Hell. Bring back the old days where the Michigan gymnasts jumped off trampolines during time-outs. That was entertaining.
Before they started pumping in music at every opportunity the cheerleaders literally led cheers during commercial breaks. I know there is still some of that going on but not nearly as much and, to me, the experience suffers from their exclusion
Maybe it's time for the universities to stop sexualizing cheerleaders? Tight short skirts and bear midriffs. Evidently it's okay at a distance or for TV, just don't place them close to the people?
High schools and Middle schools do the same thing. The things they have those girls wearing is ridiculous. My daughter tried cheer for peewee football and they even had them in cheer competitions. They plaster them with makeup and hair products and turn these little girls into little fake barbies. Luckily it was only for one season and she went back to soccer.
Its not just cheer though. Have you seen the shorts the volleyball girls wear in college and high school? I dont even want my daughter playing volleyball now! lol
Volleyball story "broke" today. All over the news.
I actually thought about the University of Chicago aspect of this, too. It’s probably a remote possibility, but this is so pervasive that it just might well be the outcome.
Northwestern is very strong academically. I expect the Administration to conduct a thorough investigation of the athletic department - every entity, every sport, etc. Any sport - coach - staff - that indicates hazing - a complete change in leadership.
We each have our definition of what is, or isn’t, acceptable. My primary thought is.. “extra things”.. like hauling gear out to, and back in from - practice - for first year players.. is acceptable. So are “embarrassing” activities - like singing or dancing - in front of the team. Or, as certain Michigan commenters have shared - like painting the Rock. Are fine. There’s a line.. where it’s sexual or racial in nature - which is not acceptable.
It might be that Northwestern will be truly amateur for a season - and re-build their entire Athletic Department / Programs.
You know what’s really interesting, though? Every single thing you mentioned would be against Michigan’s hazing policy.
I don't see a scenario where NW walks away from $100 million a year and a bunch of air time on local and occasionally national TV.
Any requirement that women (or men) cheerleaders must go mingle with alumni is wrong, It's not as if they just randomly decided to visit the Wilson Club
Is it wrong if they required the pep band to play at an alumni gathering?
I know, I know, the point is that the cheerleaders (a group which includes men too, unless I'm wrong) are by-their-nature sexualized and at risk in such situations. I don't disagree. I just don't know why they exist in the first place, if that's the connotation.
(Unless you're suggesting that the university simply shouldn't ask any college-age women to appear at these gatherings, in any circumstances).
Not sure if they're suggesting it, but I will.
Colleges should not be pimping out cheerleaders to donors.
Cheerleaders greet the arriving fans at the top of the escalator before basketball games at Crisler.
Let’s not.
As a Washington fan, I can't tell you how much joy I get when I see Dan Snyder name now a days.
I have a hard time understanding how this culture was so widespread there. Why Northwestern and not other schools? Or is this just the way in all of college athletics and no one talks about it? It just doesn't make sense that this is only a Northwestern thing.
Asking the real questions.
2 theories:
1. Private school
2. They are not the only one, and you might see more stories like this as student-athletes feel emboldened to go public similar to the Me Too movement.
There is something to the private school theory...if you look at a macro level. Of course there will be exceptions. But I would bet anything that if you went looking into the Ivy's and the Service Academies, you'll find the same things.
Just like frats and sororities across the country.
Hazing gets blurred with initiation and tradition and then this crap happens.
Also read through everything at NW and it's pretty clear what happened. What's been reported is almost exactly as I hypothesized 2 weeks ago, which was, this crap existed when Fitz was playing. But two things:
1. It wasn't nearly as "bad."
2. Our definition and tolerance for hazing was much different.
But like damn near everything in American society...you have to do it "bigger and better" than the group before you.
So year after year these hazing "traditions" evolved, they got worse. Meanwhile our definition and tolerance for hazing was going in the opposite direction.
In 1995 it's called "horseplaying," but it's also not as organized or mandatory like it is in 2000, then those freshmen become seniors and in 2005 its even worse. Then in 2010, it's even worse. And in 2015...a group of idiots decide..."why just do this at camp?" and they take it back to Evanston...and year after year it escalates until 2023 when everything comes to a head.
It's easy to see how this could happen and how someone like Fitz wouldn’t be able to catch it. In his mind, one could assume that he's thinking...they're "horseplaying like guys on my team did in '95." Oblivious to the fact that it's gotten far worse than the locker room chanting "na-ked pull-ups" and players having the option to do or not to do them (like his '95 teams). Now it's gotten physical, organized, and downright illegal.
---------
As a tangent, I always felt that would be Fitz's downfall...not this hazing, this has been shocking and sad, but his Brady Hoke unwillingness to evolve would eventually lead to his demise. Always hiring from within, "MICHIGAN MAN!"*, old school, toxic masculinity tough, etc.
I never thought it was an issue until I saw Harbaugh have to change. He overhauled and modernized his entire program after building it in the image of Bo...and look at the results. Fitz was a dinosaur. His time was coming even without this scandal.
*Michigan Man in the sense of how Hoke defined it...not in the sense of, you can't hire alums. Hiring alums is fine, Mike Hart is one of the best RB coaches in the country. Ron Bellamy is an A-level recruiter. These are "Michigan Men" who understand the tradition of Michigan without forcing today's athlete into some bullshit definition from the Schembechler era.
That's really weird. First, let's not get too myopic about how much more enlightened we are today. We knew some forms of hazing were wrong in the mid-90s. Or at least many of us did (just like today).
Also, weird slam at Brady Hoke, who, yes, failed as a head coach at Michigan, but never faced any allegations of any kind that he condoned hazing of this kind.
Finally, though it's not quite clear, did you just equate "Michigan Man" with "old-school" and "toxic masculinity tough?" Why? Was Steve Fisher — the first and eponymous "Michigan Man in this construct — "old school" and "toxic masculinity tough?"
I think you're saying that the Michigan football team prioritizes "toughness" and "deference to old-fashioned coaching concepts over creative (and less physical) schemes." Which ... maybe, I guess (though we did hire Rich Rod, who was a terrible human being despite being known for his creativity and "modern" game-planning). But what does any of that have to do with Fitzgerald?
Anyway, I like Brady Hoke, and I push back against the suggestion that he and Fitzgerald are the same. That's really unfair, and unwarranted.
How in the world did you equate what I said about Brady Hoke with hazing?
FFS, what a reach.
The point was Fitz was a dinosaur and unwilling to change and I felt it was going lead to his undoing. I even said, not by hazing, just by being unwilling to change/modernize his program.
How did you miss that part?
The "Michigan Man" thing in terms of of what Bo said has always been way overplayed. He was saying he didn't want a coach who was already committed to going to another program
I’m not buying the private school/culture theory. Bad behavior can and does happen everywhere, without regard for private vs public. The sexual abuse stuff happened at Michigan, MSU, PSU, in the USA women’s gymnastics program and many other institutions where it may or may not have been discovered and reported publicly. Unfortunately, where there are people there are problems, some of them terrible ones.
Your overall point is accurate, that bad actors can pop up anywhere.
However, public schools have more public oversight. At least officially; some colleges are the most important state institution and can mostly avoid scrutiny. :
Great questions Wendy. I often thought it was common college behavior. The more these stories come out the more I’m wondering if NU really did have a particularly toxic culture in the AD.
Could that come from those responsible for hiring coaches? Continuing to hire coaches who might condone or be oblivious to the culture and then the culture takes on a life of its own?
No real emphasis on a culture of respect and camaraderie from the very top down?
I remember talking to a former Bo era player and kinda assuming he went through hazing and such. I shared with him some of my experiences at NU and his response was, “I always felt a deep respect from Bo. Personally.” I remember thinking that I never felt that from my coach at NU. Not once did I think he cared about me as a person. He continually reminded us that this is a business and we are assets (or liabilities) to his livelihood.
The hazing I experienced could have been different. My team was full of guys with many talents to offer the world far beyond sports. Had they been led differently they could have been great role models for me as a freshman.
Nerds trying to be cool never ends well.
This is a uniquely private school thing. There are certain cultures and privileges that don’t - and I would argue, can’t - exist in public institutions.
Another word for them would be entitlements
The doctors at OSU, MSU, UM? Just because there is officially oversight doesn't mean people actually check on things.
It's not.
I've been saying for weeks. Every coach and AD in the country has to be sick.
This could EASILY turn into a #MeToo movement. All it'll take is a few from outside NW and it'll be a massive story.
Hazing happens everywhere (it's not right, it's sick, I don't condone it, I'm not saying it's okay because it's everywhere). And in all sports.
If someone really wanted to start a movement, it wouldn't take much when it comes to hazing in college athletics.
I was just watching the 30 for 30 on 'The U' and they are celebrating the hazing in their program from the 90s and 00s. It would be everywhere and at every school.
I understand that is your experience, but you can't just claim it's not that way as fact. I attended an elite, private k-12, prep school because my mom taught there (free tuition), went to UM as an out-of-stater (crazy loans, grants, and working 30 hours a week), and I've taught at low-income district public schools and now a small private high school (since 2014) for the last 25 years and IMO, there is a huge difference in the cultural mindset and entitlement of private school parents and attendees as compared to public schools.
The expectation that you can and should be deferred to, that you are somehow special b/c the cost of tuition and supposed academic rigor, and the need to make sure that you are able to practice dominance and putting others in their place is palpable in a way that simply does not exist at that level in public education. In addition and perhaps in opposition to what I just described, there is also a constant Eddie Haskel-like demonstration to kiss ass and show you can follow the rules when you're being watched.
This is not to say everyone who attends a private school is like that or that that behavior doesn't exist in public education. However, IMO, it is a cultural thing that has to do with all the demographics involved.
C'mon man, don't be silly, it's everywhere.
The lawyer simply has an in and there could be 100s of millions of dollars in this case. It's just like when there's misconduct by a teacher or an officer, or any other organization backed by potentially limitless money, I'm positive in those cases the legal firm could give a shit about "the school children" or "excessive force".
Have we all forgotten why pharma, oil conglomerates, food industries, auto industries, airline industries, big tech industries, etc. etc. all have total monopolistic control? It's because of the legal system and how lucrative it is--your doctor's medical advice is STRICTLY based off of what they can and cannot be sued for. That's it.
I'm not trying to be cynical but let's not be naive to the way the world works. It's certainly less physcially barbaric than chopping eachothers heads off, public hangings, torture, and mutilating wars, but people today aren't any less good or bad than they are today, there's just more standards for the physically painful things (but notice the mentally painful things have yet to be addressed in any serious way).
When there's blood in the water, the sharks gather (which I'm told is actually an overstatement when it comes to actual sharks, so comparing them to lawyers is doing a disservice to the damn shark).
EDIT: Also I'm not in anyway condoning or hand-waving, it is a practice that should be stopped, but to think it's unique to Northwestern, or football, is willfully blind.
I can easily buy that some degree of hazing exists across the sports world, but this level of hazing? I’m not sure.
It starts with the coaching. Some coaches catch even a whiff of this and they stamp it out. Most are probably at least generally antagonistic to it. When kids think their coach wants them to discipline the weak or halfhearted, that’s what they do. They key off the leaders. My guess is that some version of this went on in the 1990s and Fitz really liked it. Some version of this happened at most fraternities at Michigan in the 1990s. Kids that age don’t need a lot of encouragement and it takes leadership to channel those urges and structure discipline and team building in healthy ways.
Bad jocks dot com exposed the NU women’s soccer program for hazing in 2006. It was a lead story on ESPN. Unless I’m misremembering, I believe baseball and football houses/apartments were visited as part of the soccer hazing. What if the AD thoroughly looked into more sports then?
I 100% believe Macpherson and/or other coaches saw aspects of the hazing. The more I read this stuff and think about my own experiences the more I believe it all. I just assumed Fitz ran a different program than my sport or women’s soccer. Turns out there was a lot of toxic behavior everywhere and it wasn’t stopped.
I'm not sure Northwestern has any options other than starting from scratch with the football program and a thorough housecleaning within the athletic department as a whole---each and every NU sports team needs to be looked at by an independent team of investigators. And where evidence warrants it, fully clean house in those individual sports.
It's looking more and more unlikely that there's anyone on the football staff that, going forward, can and should be associated with the program. And it shouldn't matter that the season is just 6 weeks away and preseason practices officially begin soon. There can be no continuity here, no matter how badly it affects their W-L record. Bring in a whole new patchwork staff on an interim basis if necessary.
As for the AD's office itself, that's in need of a lot of weed-pulling based upon the chain of command and who knew what/who ignored the smoke and flames.
What type of self imposed actions are investigations will Northwestern pursue?
Specifically? Couldn't tell you, but the relative-new University President inherited a helluva mess, a mess that will require decisive action by him and the NU trustees/regents.
Rob, I agree.. in that I don’t know what they’ll exactly do. But, I do expect a fine tooth comb. And, I wonder what the recent “internal investigation” revealed that hasn’t been made public. As was noted in other conversations / threads - it seems like the Daily Northwestern uncovered more in a long weekend - than that internally sponsored investigative team did in months.
I have a sense that.. “there’s a lot of smoke”… and wonder just how big the fire will turn out to be.
Braun has been there 7 months. I can see him staying on as head coach, and any recent, non internal hires, staying on as well. As long as there is nothing in the allegations about any of the newcomers.
Northwestern's legal counsel may be thinking in terms of billable eons, in other words. Yikes.
If this happened in the SEC, Georgia Southern would really be in trouble!
This is going to get much worse before it gets better and many people are going to lose their jobs. It will also cost the school millions.
Locals are hoping it stops new football stadium development.
I love football, but I have a hard time with a school that is generally only decent to mediocre at football with little fan support spending a billion dollars on a smaller football stadium than they have now.
I feel like Northwestern *is* the Georgia Southern in this case, compared to the scandals at Penn State, Michigan State, Ohio State, and Michigan.