As with any scandal, one of the central questions surrounding the Northwestern football hazing allegations was whether or not Pat Fitzgerald was aware of what may or may not have happened within his locker room.
NU president Michael Schill rendered that question moot in retroactively declaring that Fitzgerald should have known when explaining his decision to fire his head coach after first rendering a 2-week suspension. "The confidential report concluded that while there was corroborating evidence that hazing occurred, there was no direct evidence that Coach Fitzgerald was aware of the hazing. 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 said at the time.
Ultimately, the legal process will determine whether Schill's after-the-fact justification was strong enough to fire his head coach, but for the rest of us the question still remains: Was Pat Fitzgerald aware of what allegedly took place in his locker room?
Northwestern's six-month, third-party investigation found no evidence Fitzgerald and the coaches were aware of any misconduct. Additionally, Northwestern Rivals site Wildcat Report put that question to former players from across the spectrum of Fitzgerald's 17 years atop the program.
From the piece:
The one thing that every player we spoke with agrees on is that they don’t believe that Fitzgerald was aware of the hazing, and, if he were, he would have put a stop to it immediately.
This is where the players – the captains and the Leadership Council in particular – may have let Fitzgerald down. All of them said that the locker room is the players’ domain, and that coaches are rarely in there outside of game day. They are disappointed that no one seemingly brought the hazing to Fitzgerald’s attention.
Asked to comment on the situation at SEC media days on Monday, LSU's Brian Kelly, as delicately as he could, explained that he would have been aware of such a problem in his locker room because he's in his locker room.
"You know, look, it's a very difficult situation because I know Pat and I have the utmost respect for him as a person, as a family man, as a father. But the reality of it is coaches are the leaders of their program. When things are not going the way they should be, there's an accountability, and I don't think he's somebody that would walk away from accountability at any time, and I'm not here to speak for him, but I can tell you in my situation that a head coach is walking around those halls," Kelly said.
"A head coach is in the locker room. A head coach is eating with his team. A head coach knows his leadership team. He also has many other support staff members that are in constant contact with his football team. The strength staff, your mental performance teams. You have so many different outlets to touch those players on a day-to-day basis.
"That's how we operate within our program."
In Kelly's words, a similar question would never be asked of him, because he makes it his business to step foot over every inch of the program.