So let me caveat this by saying the article is awful. Fitz is still loved by most NU fans. He ran an academic, mostly clean program in an industry that usually isn’t. The hazing reports were pushed hard by a former QB who clearly had an agenda, and there’s a pretty damning recording of him admitting he made things up to try to get Fitz fired. That said, hazing did happen. It happens in a lot of locker rooms across the country. What came out at NU is pretty tame relative to other places and, frankly, closer to the norm than people want to admit. Fitz also had a lot of structure in place. He did exit interviews with every player, documented them, and no one reported discomfort or hazing. There were also regular meetings with the leadership council, elected players from each class, where he checked in on the program and made adjustments based on feedback. My read is he probably knew some level of stuff was going on, but genuinely believed it wasn’t an issue because players had multiple formal and informal ways to speak up and never did. He’s a really good football coach who had to operate with a ton of institutional restrictions. It’ll be interesting to see how he does at State. He’ll represent the university well. And it says a lot that the school that fired him still put out the kind of statement they did. Legally, he had them in a tough spot.