EAST LANSING, MI – This was 33 months in the making, in case you’ve lost count. There’s zero chance he can contain himself now, much less take the high road. He didn’t wait nearly three years to allow someone behind the wall, behind the safety and sanity of truth on your side, without knowing this day was coming.
Where for the first time, someone outside Pat Fitzgerald’s inner circle is hearing his side of the story — the unvarnished truth rising from months of misinformation, disinformation and finally, beautifully, sweet vindication — and he can barely hold it in.
“I feel like Andy Dufresne in 'Shawshank Redemption,'” Fitzgerald says, and while the exclusive interview with USA TODAY Sports has just begun, he hasn’t even settled in behind his desk at Michigan State and the words are racing out of his mouth. “I crawled all the way through that s---, and came out cleaner on the other side.”
We’ll get to the new job soon enough, the perfect fit of blue collar, hard-working, wildly successful coach, and the blue collar, hard-working Michigan State program that not so long ago had control of the Big Ten. But we’ve got other business to take care of first.
Specifically, the business of truth and reality from Fitzgerald’s ugly and unfair firing by his beloved alma mater Northwestern nearly three summers ago. How every allegation and shock headline of player mistreatment, every leaked story and false narrative, never broke Fitzgerald and his family.
But you better believe it damn near did.
This isn’t about money and the multi-million dollar settlement from Northwestern, or most important, the public statement from the university completely exonerating Fitzgerald from player mistreatment allegations. This is about legacy and loyalty, about a man who spent a majority of his life bleeding and building for a college football program, a university, that had long prior lost relevancy and was swirling in the backwash of who cares.
So after an All-American career as a linebacker at Northwestern, after five years as an assistant coach and 17 as the head coach, and after building — literally piece by piece — the program into a respectable and at times dangerous team despite the inherent disadvantages, this was his reward.
He was the tip of the spear for all things Northwestern, the face of the university — not some stuffed shirt attorney on Michigan Avenue or groundbreaking researcher at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He was the force behind getting that $270 million palace of a practice facility built on the banks of Lake Michigan, the one NFL franchises fantasize about. He was the one who convinced those same deep pocket boosters to throw $800 million more into replacing a decrepit stadium. Had the entire program poised to take a shot at what lovable loser Indiana later did.
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Yet there he was, days after being told he had been fired because of allegations that would never be proven, skulking through a back stairwell of that 425,000-foot practice facility and into his former office with his wife Stacy, and packing decades of real, tangible success into cardboard boxes. While a security guard made sure he didn’t take anything that wasn’t his.
Wasn’t his.
The whole thing was his. The program, the highest graduation rate in college football, winning more with less, the winningest coach in school history, elite-level respect throughout college football. All of it.
And just like that, ripped away — a trail of tears left on those stairs all the way back down.
“We’re sitting in a loaded truck, packed completely full. Our life for all those years,” Fitzgerald says, and it’s almost like part of him still doesn’t believe it. “My wife is crying, can’t stop. This rock star of a woman who has been with me since high school. She's inconsolable.”
This is where it hits home. Losing a job for baseless allegations that were never proven is one thing. Not being allowed to have closure is another.
But watching the woman you adore weep for you, your family and your future — after years of pushing further and farther and deep into the uncomfortable, because no one grows when they’re comfortable — nearly brought him to his knees. The same woman who stuck around while Fitzgerald chased an NFL dream for a few months before pivoting to the nomadic world of coaching. The same woman who was later his rock when Northwestern coach and mentor Randy Walker suddenly passed away in the summer of 2006, and uncertainty arrived.
Fitzgerald was all of 31 — not that far removed from twice being named Big Ten defensive player of the year — when his alma mater gave him the keys to the kingdom. And said don’t screw it up.
The same woman who raised three boys while Fitzgerald worked two decades to change the way Northwestern thought about — and executed — football. The woman who never backed down or away from anyone. There he was, lost in the moment in a packed truck of memories, and the only answer that came to mind were words from his dad, Pat Sr., that have rattled around his head for decades.
You can pout and feel sorry for yourself, or you can respond.
“The car is running and we’re just staring in front of us, not moving,” Fitzgerald continues, and what’s now 33 months in the rearview is suddenly his dark companion once again. “I looked at her and said, ‘When we pull onto Sheridan Road, I want you to stop crying because this is over, and we’re moving on.”
He stops and shakes his head, and yeah, all of the unthinkable is still a kick in the shorts. He signed a nondisclosure agreement last September with Northwestern, when he officially settled out of court and was awarded millions in damages. He loves his alma mater, and wouldn’t say anything that would harm it, anyway.
“But I never got a chance to say goodbye to the janitorial staff, you know?” Fitzgerald says. “To our great chefs and cooks. To our equipment people, to the staff.”
The thought trails off, and he exhales. The lasting, final indignation is still raw.
“I was treated like a criminal,” he says.
Which takes us all the way back to 'Shawshank Redemption.'
So get busy living, or get busy dying.
The damage was done
Before we go further, let’s get something vitally important on the table: no Northwestern player was ever charged with a violation of school code or policy because of player mistreatment allegations that centered around players hazing other players.
No Northwestern players were charged by, or had allegations sent to, the state attorney. Knowingly requiring harmful acts for school group initiation is illegal in Illinois, with felonies carrying potential prison terms of 1-3 years, and fines up to $25,000.
Not one player.
Yet Northwestern settled lawsuits with multiple players, and eventually had to capitulate in its defense of Fitzgerald’s lawsuit for wrongful termination, breach of contract and defamation — and pay him undisclosed monetary damages.
The private university with a $15 billion endowment simply paid its way out of the mess it created — then publicly apologized. Two weeks after Fitzgerald and Northwestern settled out of court, university president Michael Schill announced his resignation.
Northwestern’s public statement of the settlement with Fitzgerald read, in part, “While the litigation brought to light highly inappropriate conduct in the football program and the harm it caused, the evidence uncovered during extensive discovery did not establish that any player reported hazing to Coach Fitzgerald or that Coach Fitzgerald condoned or directed any hazing. Moreover, when presented with the details of the conduct, he was incredibly upset and saddened by the negative impact this conduct had on players within the program.”
But the damage was done. Because in an ever-changing, ever-evolving, social media-driven world, the sensational sells. Even when it’s fabricated.
“I saw everything, I know everything. The ambulance chasing that occurred during that time was unbelievable,” said Jacob Schmidt, Fitzgerald’s Chief of Staff at Michigan State.
And before you think this is just a Fitzgerald character witness, understand his background. Schmidt walked on at Northwestern in 2007 to play football for Fitzgerald’s second team. By the time he graduated, he had earned a scholarship and was the team’s leading rusher. He was with Fitzgerald — as a player, as director of player development and football operations, as director of the Northwestern NIL collective — for every season since he first arrived in Evanston.
Schmidt was Fitzgerald’s first hire after he accepted the Michigan State job, and outside of Stacy Fitzgerald, no one knows Pat Fitzgerald like Schmidt — a celebrated rags to riches story at Northwestern the school’s own website describes as “remarkable.”
When Northwestern fired Fitzgerald, and Schill said allegations dated back to at least 2013, Schmidt was floored. He was there. He lived it. Looking back at it now, 33 months removed, he’s still angry about it. And now he’s getting worked up.
“You have a legal system that allows John Does to come out of the woodwork and say certain things and get paid, because the institution is a bunch of pushovers,” Schmidt said. “An incredible injustice. I will always love my alma mater. Always.”
He hesitates here, because this is where it turns. This is where all those months of heartache and heartbreak evolve into sheer determination at Michigan State.
“Fitz wasn’t ever supposed to leave Northwestern,” Schmidt said. “But now that he has, let’s freaking go. Because there’s not a more motivated man, a more motivated coach, in the country.”
Because there may not be a better marriage in college football.
Fitzgerald, 51, was a misfit from the start at Northwestern, where money and privilege are flaunted on the North Shore. He grew up a devout Irish Catholic in Orland Park in southwest Chicago. A Chicagoan through and through.
He’s not full of himself and performative, his everyman personality and temperament as Joe Sixpack as they come. Met his girl when he was 15 and she was 16, and they haven’t been apart since.
Earlier this month, Fitzgerald was hosting a coaching clinic at Michigan State as part of his first spring in East Lansing. Had coaches from all over the Detroit metro area in town, and was preaching the gospel of winning the right way in a sea of college football unknown.
They will build a roster organically, he told the coaches, and supplement from the transfer portal. They’re not going anywhere, and they’re not giving up on high school players.
“I’m the same guy who started dating his smoking hot wife in high school. I'm still here,” Fitzgerald yelled up to the high school coaches seated in the player's meeting room theater. “We want players that grind, that want to work and reap the rewards of that hard work. That want to stay and grow and be uncommon.”
He’s preaching, and the entire overachieving campus at Michigan State — the land grant school forever in the shadow of hoity-toity Michigan — is reaffirming with a resounding, Amen.
Wasn’t that long ago when Mark Dantonio built the program into a Big Ten beast, and orchestrated an impressive run to the top of college football. Just because the world has changed with NIL and free player movement doesn’t mean it can’t happen again.
“I said this to the players in our first meeting, ‘You didn’t choose me, I chose here,’” Fitzgerald said. “You’re going to get a guy who’s going to pour everything he’s got into you.”
Build and retain
Joe Rossi is a voracious reader. He’s also one of the best defensive coordinators in college football.
He’s talking about John Maxwell’s book, "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership." At the top of the list: the law of the magnet.
High achievers attract high achievers. A 10 will attract and hire other 10s, and keep them. If a 1 happens to hire a 10, odds are the 10 isn’t going to stick around long.
Michigan State will be different under Fitzgerald, Rossi says, because of the way they’ll build and retain the roster. They’ll recruit 10s. Not all will be 10s on the field, but all will be 10s in work ethic and commitment. You know, the corny and seemingly contrived stuff that always gets overlooked in the era of free player movement.
But there’s nothing fake about it. The national championship seasons at Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana were built, in part, with players who signed and stayed with the process — and with a handful of impact players from the transfer portal.
Even Indiana, with its nucleus of former James Madison players who grew with coach Curt Cignetti before transferring with him, followed the path. Developed, experienced players win championships.
In January, the starting 22 for Indiana in the national championship game played in a combined 954 games ― with 621 starts.
Michigan State will begin this season with 45 new players, a majority from Fitzgerald’s first high school recruiting class.
“For the longest time there were maybe 12 teams that could win it all because of resources,” Rossi said. “Now it has expanded to two and threefold. It’s awesome to know you’re at one of those places where we can turn it and get there.”
Back to football, again
Fitzgerald looks back at two years of legal fighting, of self-exile, and calls it a sabbatical. Time away, and a chance to reconnect with a family that sacrificed for him for so many years.
Besides, he couldn’t sit around and stew about what was without confronting what is: he’s not an introvert. He’s not sitting at home and waiting for the truth to win out, which he knew it eventually would.
He had to be out and in the middle of it all. Had to be part of football again.
“Stacy and I went on a lot of walks and were solving world peace,” Fitzgerald said. “Initially, it was like going from one million to zero as far as pace, and I don’t think I handled it very well.”
So he contacted his son’s football coach at Loyola Academy in the northern Chicago suburbs, and volunteered for the job no one wanted. There was Fitzgerald, winningest coach in Northwestern history, running the scout team offense.
Standing up in front of the starting 11 and holding up play cards, and talking trash to the defense. Just like every other low on the pole assistant at every other football program.
Loyola won back-to-back state titles with Fitzgerald running the scout team offense. Not that he had anything to do with it, he’s quick to point out.
“One of the funnest times I’ve ever had as a coach,” he says.
He turns in his office chair in the football offices at Spartan Stadium, and points to the Breslin Center and the Munn Arena directly across Shaw Lane — and a world apart from where the football team at Michigan State currently sits.
There’s an elite men’s basketball team in the Breslin Center, and an elite men’s hockey team in Munn Arena. Both have won national titles this century.
“That’s the bar,” he says.
Get busy living, or get busy dying.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pat Fitzgerald opens up about Northwestern firing, Michigan State future
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