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.)

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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. The Daily broke story after story since Friday’s limited reveal of the university’s six-month investigation into hazing in the football program, and their reporting pushed the college into changing its mind and altering the football program forever.

I know it sounds sacrilegious, but I really believe boosters should redirect their donations to what’s actually important at Northwestern: journalism. If they have student loans, someone should pay them off. Buy the students good computers, better chairs, maybe some food for the office fridge. Or heck, put some money into their coffers so they can make decent salaries. College journalists don’t need the NIL shortcut. They can just take money for their services like normal people.

It’s crazy, for sure. But I don’t think the boosters would lose too much entertainment value. Watching a student writer work might’ve been more enjoyable than catching the 1-11 Wildcats last season. Certainly, there would be more ROI.

In a statement released Monday, Northwestern president Michael Schill, who was just inaugurated into his position in early June, wrote of his decision to go from two-week unpaid suspension during summer break to firing the winningest coach in school history: “The head coach is ultimately responsible for the culture of his team. The hazing we investigated was widespread and clearly not a secret within the program, providing Coach Fitzgerald with the opportunity to learn what was happening. Either way, the culture in Northwestern Football, while incredible in some ways, was broken in others.”

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Schill, who replaced Fitzgerald ally Morton Schapiro, could’ve just admitted the obvious: He didn’t want to fire Fitz, but he really didn’t have a choice. This wasn’t going to go away as they hoped. In fact, with news breaking about issues on the baseball team, there might be another statement (and more firings) coming soon. Not exactly a sleepy summer in Evanston.

The school released more information about the investigation in the statement, but still not the actual report. That needs to happen too.

No one represented the program and its rise from rags to riches like Fitzgerald — the national defensive player of the year for the 1995 Rose Bowl team who took over the program after Randy Walker’s death in late June 2006 — and that’s why he had to go.

He’s been the head coach for 17 years, the public face of the program through good and bad. But he wasn’t just the head coach for the future pros and happy alumni. He was supposed to watch over everyone. He was the coach you wanted your son to play for. That’s what real leadership is, and I hope Fitzgerald will admit that he failed some of his players. He was the head coach, after all. In college football, that usually means you’re the end-all, be-all of the program.

No, he couldn’t know everything that allegedly happened. Most coaches leave the locker room to the players. But the good ones know what’s going on. They want to know. And given his longevity and standing, the buck stops with Fitzgerald, no matter what.

And how could he have stayed? Was Fitzgerald going to tell recruits’ parents, “Don’t worry, we have a university-mandated locker room monitor now.” Northwestern has enough problems recruiting.

I don’t begrudge football alumni if they forsake Northwestern now. Fitzgerald was a father figure to many, an inspiration to others. He has way more admirers than critics among ex-players, and to them, I’m sure this move feels like a betrayal. It’s not my place to tell them how to feel, but you can love “Fitz” and also admit that he’s not unassailable.

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And considering that Northwestern is coming off of a 1-11 season in which its only victory was against Nebraska in Ireland, and that the 2022 season was the third in four years in which the team went 1-8 in the Big Ten, perhaps it was time for him to go. He can be an analyst at Alabama or a position coach in the NFL. Fitzgerald’s coaching decisions have been questioned for years, from strategy to staffing. The recent results weren’t a fluke, and maybe the culture and the losing were intertwined. On the field, Northwestern football is in for a world of trouble this season. But that’s not important right now.

It’s time, with a new president and new athletic director, for the university to reassess what football means in Evanston. They can keep pouring money into it, but what does that really accomplish? While it’s not going to go the way of the University of Chicago, which left the Big Ten and major college football in 1939, perhaps it’s time to stop lavishing the program with riches with the hopes it can keep up with Michigan and Ohio State. College football is changing with the transfer portal and NIL rules. Where is Northwestern’s place in it?

But imagine the good $800 million could do instead of paying for another football shrine. Heck, imagine what $5.372 million per year could do.

GO DEEPER

Dochterman: Fixing Northwestern's culture is paramount, but program will struggle on the field now

(Top photo: Dan Sanger / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)