Northwestern Football Players Will Not Attend Big Ten Media Day amid Hazing Scandal

The Northwestern football program announced Tuesday that it will not attend Big Ten Media Day amid the hazing scandal that resulted in the firing of head coach Pat Fitzgerald.

"Given the recent events involving the Northwestern football program, we did not want our participation to be dominated by the hazing issue and steal the focus away from football and the upcoming season," the players said in a statement.

Interim head football coach David Braun added: "The decision from our players to forgo Big Ten Media Day was entirely theirs, and they approached it with a great deal of maturity and thoughtfulness. I'm fully supportive of both their reasoning and the decision itself, and I look forward to attending the event."

Northwestern fired Fitzgerald earlier this month following an investigation into allegations of widespread hazing within the football program. University president Michael Schill said in a statement that while there was no "credible evidence" to suggest Fitzgerald knew of the hazing, he was let go "for his failure to know and prevent significant hazing in the football program."

Lawsuits against Northwestern, Schill, Fitzgerald and athletic director Derrick Gragg are now beginning to pile up.

An anonymous former football player who played for Northwestern from 2018 through 2022 filed a lawsuit against Fitzgerald and members of the university's leadership group—including Schill and Gragg—on July 18, seeking damages from the hazing scandal, per ESPN's Dan Murphy and Adam Rittenberg.

One of the attorneys for the player told ESPN that his client "was subjected to hazing that included sexualized acts and racial discrimination." The lawsuit claims Fitzgerald took part in the "harassment, hazing, bullying, assault, and/or abuse of athletes."

Former Northwestern quarterback Lloyd Yates, who played for the program from 2015 to 2017, also filed a lawsuit against the university on Monday, alleging a "normalized" culture of hazing, sexual abuse and racism, according to Rittenberg.

One of the allegations in Yates' lawsuit comes against associate head coach Matt MacPherson, who is accused of having "witnessed several alleged hazing incidents, including naked pullups during preseason training."

The former quarterback's lawsuit also alleges that nonconsenting assistant coaches and players were subject to sexual abuse that included a group of players forcibly holding them down and rubbing "their genital areas against the [person's] genitals, face, and buttocks while rocking back and forth," according to USA Today's Tom Schad.

Yates' lawsuit is the fourth known complaint filed against Northwestern in relation to the hazing scandal, according to Schad.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump also said last week that 50 former Northwestern student-athletes, both male and female, had spoken with the Levin & Perconti law firm regarding hazing and sexual abuse allegations, per Larry Lage and Claire Savage of the Associated Press.