SI:AM | Pat Fitzgerald Under Fire at Northwestern

Plus, Allisen Corpuz wins the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. The best event of MLB’s All-Star week is tonight. (The home run derby.)

In today’s SI:AM:

🏈 Northwestern’s hazing scandal

🏌️‍♀️ Drama at the U.S. Women’s Open

📈 Top 2024 quarterback prospects

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Fitzgerald could face additional discipline

Pat Fitzgerald is synonymous with Northwestern football. He was a star linebacker for the Wildcats in the ’90s and joined the coaching staff in 2001 as an assistant. As head coach since ’06, the team has enjoyed its most consistent run of success in school history.

But there’s a very real chance that Fitzgerald’s time at Northwestern could be over.

A report published Saturday by the school’s student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, detailed allegations of hazing within the football program. The story’s main source, an unnamed former Wildcats player, called the upperclassmen’s alleged actions “absolutely egregious and vile and inhumane behavior.” The player also said they believed Fitzgerald was aware of the hazing. (See our news story for more details on the allegations.)

Allegations of hazing by Wildcats football players first surfaced in January, when ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg reported that the school had retained former assistant U.S. Attorney Maggie Hickey to conduct an investigation after being notified of a hazing allegation following the 2022 season.

The school announced on Friday that Hickey’s investigation was complete and that Fitzgerald had been suspended for two weeks without pay.

“The investigation did not uncover evidence pointing to specific misconduct by any individual football player or coach, participation in or knowledge of the hazing activities was widespread across football players,” read the summary of Hickey’s findings, according to Rittenberg.

But after the release of the Daily Northwestern report on Saturday and the subsequent public backlash to Fitzgerald’s slap on the wrist, Northwestern president Michael Schill wrote in a letter to the school community on Sunday that he was reconsidering Fitzgerald’s punishment.

“In determining an appropriate penalty for the head coach, I focused too much on what the report concluded he didn’t know and not enough on what he should have known,” Schill wrote.

The controversy places Schill in a difficult situation, Pat Forde writes:

[T]his could and probably should get worse for Fitzgerald. We’ll see how much worse, and how hard Fitz fights back. The proud Chicago South Sider and former star linebacker has been weaved into the fabric of Northwestern since the early 1990s, while Schill has been president for less than a year after arriving from Oregon. This is a tricky political dance for Schill, but also a very bad look for Fitz’s football program.

As Forde points out, firing Fitzgerald would be more palatable now that the Wildcats have gone 3–9 and 1–11 in the past two seasons. But at the same time, he’s the best coach the school has ever had and has repeatedly turned down opportunities to jump to bigger programs. The job could have been his for life if he’d avoided controversy.

It remains to be seen whether the alleged hazing will cost Fitzgerald his job, but it’s clear from Schill’s letter that some form of additional discipline is forthcoming.

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Ken Blaze/USA TODAY Sports

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The top five...

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Masataka Yoshida’s opposite-field homer over the Green Monster on a pitch way above the strike zone.

4. Victor Wembanyama’s putback dunk.

3. This defensive play by the Cardinals that I’m not even sure how to describe.

2. Trinity Rodman’s second goal for the USWNT in their final World Cup tuneup.

1. USMNT goalie Matt Turner’s clutch performance in a penalty shootout against Canada at the Gold Cup.SIQ

SIQ

At the home run derby tonight in Seattle, all eyes will be on hometown favorite Julio Rodríguez, who hit 32 home runs in the first round of last year’s derby. How many home runs did all 10 competitors combine to hit in the entire inaugural home run derby in 1985?

• 31
• 55
• 89
• 112

Friday’s SIQ: Lisa Leslie, who celebrated her 51st birthday on July 7, was one of the most celebrated high school recruits ever. How many points did she score in the first half of a game on Feb. 7, 1990, that was so lopsided the opposing team quit before the second half.

• 76
• 92
• 101
• 132

Answer: 101. Leslie, playing for Morningside High in Inglewood, Calif., fell only four points shy of tying Cheryl Miller’s national high school girls record of 105 points in a game, but the opposing team, South Torrance High, threw in the towel with the score 102–24.

Here’s how Shelley Smith described what happened next in a story that ran in Sports Illustrated right after Leslie’s big game:

Lisa’s opponents had seen enough. Two members of the visiting South Torrance team had already fouled out, and another was injured, leaving only four healthy players to contend with Lisa and her teammates. So, after taking a vote among the wounded during intermission, South Torrance coach Gilbert Ramirez decided to forfeit the game.

Upon hearing the news, Lisa asked Ramirez if his team would let her score three more baskets to surpass the record. The South Torrance players said no. The referees allowed Lisa to shoot four technicals, levied for delay of game, at the start of what would have been the third quarter. She made them all to gain what she thought was a place alongside Miller, who played for Riverside (Calif.) Poly High and starred at USC, in the record book. The points, however, were later nullified by Southern Section officials, who ruled that the game was over when Ramirez quit at the half.

Leslie’s dominance in that game was a foregone conclusion—not because she was the best player in the country, but because her coach had decided to let her control the game. As Smith’s story explains, in each of the past three seasons, Morningside coach Frank Scott had allowed one senior to try to break the school’s scoring record in the team’s final home game of the season. The South Torrance game was actually the second-to-last home game of the season. The last game was against a team that Morningside had previously gotten in a fight with, and Scott was worried more fireworks would ensue if Leslie had tried for the record in that game.