Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this. But let’s also not be naive enough to think that there’s not a chance in hell that it won’t. The minute Ben Crump’s name came up as one of the legal representatives in a potential lawsuit against Northwestern, former football coach Pat Fitzgerald and university president Michael Schill, we knew race was going to play a major role not only in how this story was going to move forward, but also in how it was going to be told, viewed and received. White school, athletes of color at the center, this can’t be good. As Rick Morrissey called it, Northwestern’s ‘‘journey to rock bottom.’’
So far, we know there’s a possibility of at least 50 potential plaintiffs, most former NU football players but some from other sports, who plan to possibly file lawsuits against Northwestern and various individuals connected to the football program who had knowledge of the “toxic culture” of hazing going on within the program or who for years failed in their jobs and responsibilities to make sure criminal acts of violence or discrimination didn’t happen to student-athletes on their watch. Most of the athletes have yet to disclose themselves to the public. Most have kept their names, images and likenesses anonymous. Smart move. Why open themselves up to the racial bonfires that often arise when people of color legally challenge the wrongdoings of those who don’t share the same ethnicity space as them? Who once had power over them? Even though each complaint against Northwestern alleges ‘‘long-standing issues involving hazing and bullying that take on a sexual and/or racist tone.’’
Lloyd Yates, of color. Warren Miles-Long, of color. Ramon Diaz Jr., of color. Simba Short, of color. All plaintiffs in forthcoming cases. The number of “of color” plaintiffs will increase as the cases unfold. Nigel Glover, of color. Justin Cryer, of color. Both were members of Northwestern’s football program last season; both exited via transfer portal last week. Dillan Johnson, of color. Johnson, the Joliet Catholic recruit who was slated to join the Wildcats in 2024, decommitted, choosing Wisconsin last week as his next football home. Then there’s Derrick Gragg. Another brotha from another mother whom Northwestern hired in 2021 to be the university’s athletic director. The first “one” in the university’s history.
“I’ve been a pioneer almost everywhere I’ve gone, including coming to Northwestern,” Gragg once said in speaking about how few African Americans held the position he’d just accepted with Northwestern. He being the same person who publicly called upon all Wildcats to “speak up, come together and stand against all forms of social injustice.”
He who, it’s almost certain, will be the race card in most of the movement forward in this not totally surprising story of the horrid inner workings inside NCAA Division I college athletics. Not lost on some is how convenient that this decades-old pattern and practice is investigated and goes public during Gragg’s rare tenure as one of the few Black men overseeing a D-I program. In 2018-19, according to information provided by the Black AD Alliance, only 8.7% of D-I ADs were black. As of 2021, according to a Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University study, that number had risen to 10.3%, with (do the math) approximately 37% of those ADs at HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). Now at a prestigious Big Ten PWI (Predominately White Institution) that is 6% black in student population, a percentage low enough to be below the 7% of the student body who claim to be of two or more races and just above the lowest percentage of racially “unknowns,” the racial makeup of the majority of the victims and the color of the AD as one of the named defendants and the prosecutor all to some degree will come into play.
And although most of the incidents that will be brought up in relation to the lawsuits occurred before Gragg got to Evanston, there will — consciously or unconsciously — be the “Well, your name is mentioned in several of the lawsuits, and you are currently overseeing everything related to athletics within the university, so the responsibility falls on you” aspect of the saga. And because there are so few POCs doing what Gragg does or has the responsibility that he has, the color of his skin is about to become a front-and-center storyline.
And here’s where the double-down on that might occur: Of the 11 criminal offenses that the school recognizes on its website that have occurred on campus — crimes that include everything from arson to rape to robbery to murder — since 2018, hazing and racial discrimination are not included. Which in court — and public opinion — can easily be presented as the university not taking hazing and racial discrimination seriously enough, and with Gragg as a Black man, something he should have paid attention to the minute he sat in his AD chair.
What is eventually going to be the downfall is the transparency issue. That will be attached to Gragg when the “it happened on his watch” decree isn’t enough. Why didn’t you provide the public with the full findings of the initial investigation, especially once you saw many of the kids who could have been your kids were the victims? That, of course, will be followed by “the first Black athletic director in Northwestern University’s history” being held against him. And that’s when all of us who share his hue will have to share his burden and responsibility.
Look, no one hires Crump without cause. Crump operates with a personal and legal belief that “it’s become painfully obvious we have two systems of justice: one for white Americans and one for Black Americans.” Al Sharpton calls him “Black America’s attorney general” for a reason. He gets to the bottom of the role race plays in cases where Black and brown people have been victimized. He rarely loses, and he far more often than not forces the country to see through the prism he uses to build his cases. And even though Jim Phillips (current ACC commissioner) was the AD at Northwestern during a majority of the time when the alleged hazing took place, it will be Gragg’s face that will be attached to the story and scandal as the years go by. Regardless of the cases’ outcomes.
And that’s the other unfortunate. It’s bad enough that the former students in their introduction to big-time football at a university they felt was a safe place had to endure the hazing, disrespect and humiliation — and now they have to possibly relive those moments in a court of law in order to find some form of restitution — but there will be a Black man who looks like many of them who will be cast as, not the main one, but one of the villains along with being the one who more than certainly will be portrayed as the “example” of what to avoid by many institutions of higher learning so that anything closely similar never happens again. And even though the word “race” hasn’t been overtly prevalent in the stories surrounding the forthcoming lawsuits so far, the makeup of the well-known lead counsel and victims (at least in one lawsuit) vs. the racial makeup of Northwestern’s student body, leadership and faculty — with a Black unicorn in the role of AD — will make race an inevitable codefendant.
