ACC commissioner Jim Phillips sued by former Northwestern athletes over hazing
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips is listed as a defendant in a new lawsuit filed by a former Northwestern athlete over mistreatment during his time at the school.
According to a copy of the lawsuit filed in Chicago on Wednesday, Phillips is included because he was the school’s athletics director at the time of the incidents.
Phillips was Northwestern’s athletics director from 2008 until taking the ACC’s top job in 2021. The ACC did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Lawyers prepared to file second lawsuit listing Phillips among the defendants on Thursday.
“Certainly his tenure as athletic department head overlaps with the allegations that have been made,” Patrick Salvi, one of the lawyers representing the athletes, said during a news conference in Chicago on Wednesday morning.
On Thursday, Phillips released a statement saying he always protected student-athletes.
“This has been a difficult time for the Northwestern University community, a place that my entire family called home,” Phillips said. “Over my 30-year career in intercollegiate athletics, my highest priority has been the health and safety of all student-athletes. Hazing is completely unacceptable anywhere and my heart goes out to anyone who carries the burden of having been mistreated. Any allegation that I condoned or tolerated inappropriate conduct against student-athletes is absolutely false. I will vigorously defend myself against any suggestion to the contrary.”
The lawsuits, filed in Cook County Court, identify the former Northwestern football players as John Doe 2 and John Doe 3. Both played for the Wildcats from 2018-22. In the court document, they allege harassment, hazing, bullying, assault and/or abuse of athletes.
Three legal actions have now been taken taken against Northwestern since football coach Pat Fitzgerald was fired on July 10 following stories in the Daily Northwestern student newspaper that detailed a toxic culture in his program, bringing new details to light the school failed to note when it briefly suspended Fitzgerald in the wake of its own internal investigation into issues with the program.
The lawsuits also name Fitzgerald, current athletics director Derrick Gragg and Northwestern president Michael Schill among the defendants. The second lawsuit also includes Phillips and previous Northwestern president Morton Schapiro, as well as the school’s board of trustees.
“It’s not just one coach,” Parker Stinar, another lawyer representing the athletes, said Wednesday. “It’s an athletic department, possibly a president, that allowed this to go on for years and failed to take appropriate action to protect young individuals from traumatic events in their life.”
The disclosures threw the Evanston, Ill., campus into chaos. Schill announced this week a pair of new external investigations into the athletics department in light of the scandal, while Northwestern also fired baseball coach Jim Foster after a different internal investigation uncovered bullying and a toxic environment in that program.
“I think what is extremely important for people to understand about the current situation,” Salvi said on Wednesday, “and what we’re learning is that the abuse and the hazing and racial discrimination that took place within the Northwestern athletic department is so widespread that it goes well beyond football.”
Fitzgerald had already been the football coach for two years, promoted into that role when Randy Walker died suddenly in the summer of 2006, when Phillips arrived from Northern Illinois in 2008. One of the program’s greatest players and a Chicago-area native, Fitzgerald was at the time one of the youngest coaches in major college football and became the winningest coach in Northwestern history.
In January 2021, shortly before leaving for the ACC, Phillips signed Fitzgerald to a 10-year contract extension worth a reported $57 million running through 2030, amid interest from NFL teams. Phillips had also extended Fitzgerald’s contract in May 2011 and April 2017.
“We have one of the best coaches in college football and, more importantly, a leader uncommonly suited to this University,” Phillips said in the press release announcing the 2021 extension. “Over the course of his tenure, Coach Fitzgerald has built a culture of unwavering belief in excellence both on and off the field, and led our Wildcats to unprecedented sustained success.”
This story was originally published July 19, 2023 at 3:52 PM with the headline "ACC commissioner Jim Phillips sued by former Northwestern athletes over hazing."