Hayes: Now what, Northwestern? Good luck finding a coach capable of stopping the bleeding

The irony in this mess is that firing Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald will be Michael Schill’s easiest decision.

He already has ripped off the Band-aid.

Now he has to stop the bleeding.

The rest of the heavy lift for Northwestern’s new president will define the football program — and to a lesser extent, the university — and how it functions moving forward for years to come.

Schill’s now former coach has lawyered up and is seeking the $42 million in buyout money he believes he is owed.

His new coach will have to heal a fractured locker room, where a small number of current players joined former players in claiming mistreatment — while a majority of the roster publicly proclaimed in an open letter that the allegations against Fitzgerald have been “exaggerated and twisted into lies.”

His new coach will follow the old coach who, despite the inherent recruiting obstacles at Northwestern of competing at a high level in the Big Ten, became the winningest coach in school history and the most prominent face at the university over his 17 seasons.

“Replacing a football coach is never easy,” a former Big Ten athletic director told Saturday Tradition. “Replacing a fired coach, for something other than performance, is 100 times more difficult. Replacing a guy like Fitz? Almost impossible on the first try.”

Schill has been president all of 5 weeks, and already he is staring at a crossroads. His fumbling and bumbling of Fitzgerald’s termination places the target of the next potential firing directly on his back.

Northwestern found out about the allegations of player mistreatment in November of 2022, and a 3rd-party law firm investigated the allegations for 6 months. Schill determined last Friday that information gleaned from the investigation demanded a 2-week suspension for Fitzgerald.

Three days later — after what Schill called “new media” revelations — Fitzgerald was fired.

Did “new media” uncover allegations that 6 months of investigative work didn’t? Or did public pressure — the “new media” of social media pressure — force Schill’s hand?

What new football coach willingly walks into this mess — where Jim Foster, the Northwestern baseball coach, is also being investigated for creating an “abusive” environment — and tries to replace the greatest coach in program history?

A program that already had fallen into a rare rut under Fitzgerald, who was slow to embrace all things NIL and the transfer portal because of his love and loyalty to the amateur model. Call it what you want — corny, contrived, out of touch — Fitzgerald wanted to develop productive members of society and football players.

That Pollyanna goal cost him over 3 of the past 4 seasons. Because while the rest of the sport was throwing around NIL money and begging 17- and 18-year-olds to come play for State U., Fitzgerald stuck to his principles and won only 1 Big Ten game 3 times in the past 4 seasons.

He still signed a 10-year extension in 2021 — after 2 of those 1-8 Big Ten seasons were already in the bank — that paid $57 million over the life of the deal. Northwestern wasn’t concerned about the slippage then, but you better believe saving that money by firing Fitzgerald for cause was part of the process over the past 3 days of decision-making.

It’s easy to fire a coach facing serious allegations, who has a fat contract but hasn’t produced a product to the level of the deal. It’s easy to overlook how before the recent rut, Fitzgerald was the architect of bringing the program into the 21st century.

The new football training center on the banks of Lake Michigan is better than a majority of NFL and college facilities. The proposed $800 million in renovations to Ryan Field, like the new football facility, will allow future teams to compete at procuring players and succeeding in the ever-changing college football landscape.

All of those donations, all of that cash for capital projects, don’t happen without Fitzgerald at the tip of the spear, selling a dream and a vision and then winning like few believe Northwestern could do.

That’s who Schill is replacing. It’s not just a coach, it’s a culture — one that was rocked by allegations of mistreatment Schill admitted Fitzgerald didn’t know about and wasn’t complicit with their execution.

You’ll hear about coaching candidates over the weeks and months to come, and many will be good fits. Some will be pipe dreams — like former Northwestern quarterback and current New York Giants offensive coordinator Mike Kafka.

He’s not leaving the NFL, where he’s on a fastback to become a head coach, for the heavy lift at his alma mater. Former Stanford coach David Shaw, who worked and succeeded at a high level under similar circumstances at Stanford, would be a home run hire.

But does he want to jump back into a difficult situation just to get back on the field, mere months after resigning from Stanford? More problematic for Schill is any new hire won’t be Fitzgerald, won’t be a coach who will turn down multiple job offers from the NFL and college football heavyweights, to coach a program with so many inherent obstacles.

Schill ripped off the Band-aid, and now this is seeping out of the wound: The Northwestern job has once again become a stepping stone or a tombstone.

You win and move on to a bigger job, or lose and get fired. It’s no longer just a lost coach, it’s a lost culture.

Now Schill has to stop the bleeding.

Matt Hayes

Matt Hayes is a National College Football Writer for Saturday Tradition. You can also hear him daily on 1010XL in Jacksonville. Follow on Twitter @MattHayesCFB