Northwestern A.D. calls out team's football coaches for "tone deaf" actions

For those keeping track, it has been exactly 30 days since Northwestern leaders fired football coach Pat Fitzgerald amidst a third-party probe into allegations of widespread hazing within the Wildcats football program.

That move came some 72 hours after the school's president, Michael Schill, and athletics director, Derrick Gragg, had initially elected to impose a two-week suspension on Fitzgerald, the widely beloved former All-American player who had devoted more than two decades of his adult life to the school. 

Wednesday, as Northwestern continued in the early stages of its preseason camp under interim head coach David Braun ahead of its Sept. 3 season opener at Rutgers, several Wildcats assistant coaches and support staff donned T-shirts on the practice field that read "'Cats against the World" and also were stamped with the No. 51. That, of course, was Fitzgerald's jersey number when he starred at Northwestern in the mid-1990s.

Gragg, who was not present at Braun's press conference Wednesday, nonetheless issued a scathing statement that decried the decisions of those who donned the shirts.

"I am extremely disappointed that a few members of our football program staff decided to wear 'Cats Against the World' t-shirts," Gragg said in a statement widely shared on social media. "Neither I nor the University was aware that they owned or would wear these shirts today."

Gragg's only public interview to date originated from Big Ten Media Days earlier this month in Indianapolis; he has not answered questions from media in any kind of open forum.

Braun, however, was asked directly about the shirts in his post-practice press conference. 

"It certainly isn't my business to censor anyone's free speech," said Braun, who was hired by Fitzgerald to Northwestern earlier this year to run the Wildcats' defense.

Gragg hammered the coaches who wore the shirts and the message displayed on them.

"The shirts are inappropriate, offensive and tone deaf," Gragg said. "Let me be crystal clear: hazing has no place at Northwestern, and we are committed to do whatever is necessary to address hazing-related issues, including thoroughly investigating any incidents of hazing or any other misconduct."

While the T-shirts very obviously lend indirect support to Fitzgerald, they do not carry a message of support for hazing.

And since the school's investigation into the football program's alleged hazing problems, myriad lawsuits have arisen that take aim at what plaintiffs allege has been a widespread culture of hazing in numerous sports.

Current Wildcats football players -- none of whom has spoke out against Fitzgerald of the program's culture -- meanwhile are left to try to prepare for the coming season amidst a tumultuous climate in which the school's top two leaders repeatedly leave the youngest people in the room to answer the most difficult questions.