Memo to deep-pocketed Northwestern boosters: Redirect your planned athletic department contributions to Norris University Center, 1999 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL.
That’s the address of the Daily Northwestern, the most deserving team of your money. (No offense to Northwestern women’s lacrosse.)
The football program has received millions upon millions of dollars from friends of the program for a space-age workout facility and whatever else Pat Fitzgerald had wanted over the last decade-plus. An $800 million upgrade at Ryan Field is (or maybe was) on deck.
Fitzgerald himself was sponsored. His official title was Dan and Susan Jones Family Head Football Coach. Despite all that purple pride, he didn’t work cheap. He reportedly made $5.372 million in salary last year as part of a massive 10-year deal that was supposed to go through 2030.
That’s all past tense because the university fired him Monday. The new president and the board of trustees apparently couldn’t handle the deluge of stories, most of which were from student reporters, about hazing allegations in the football program.
The Daily reporters, working for the summer newspaper, busted open what the athletic department was trying to bury with a Friday news dump and a meager two-week unpaid suspension of Fitzgerald….
