Pat Fitzgerald says he's crawled through turmoil, and come out clean

EAST LANSING, Mich. — 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 — 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 tackle 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.

Yet there he was, days after being told he had been fired because of allegations that would never be proved, 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. “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 allegations that were never proved 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 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 died 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. 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.

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’s 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.

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.

But the damage was done.

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.

So he contacted his son’s football coach at Loyola Academy, and volunteered for the job no one wanted. There was Fitzgerald, winningest coach in Northwestern history, running the scout-team offense.

“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.

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