No, Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald is not on the hot seat

It’s been a rough year for Northwestern football but any notion head coach Pat Fitzgerald is on the hot seat is ridiculous.

Make no mistake about it, this has been a terrible year for Northwestern football. The Wildcats are the worst team in the Big Ten, one year after winning the West and playing in the Big Ten Championship Game. The Northwestern offense has set back football by about a century with the gross deficiencies in the passing game. They’re definitely not making a bowl game and this might be the worst season in 14 seasons with Pat Fitzgerald as the head coach. But there’s zero chance of Fitzgerald being on the hot seat or any notion that Northwestern could make a coaching change.

College and pro coaches don’t often get the benefit of the doubt in a cancel culture that is quick to move on to the next option after the slightest sign of things going south. It’s the nature of social media and every fan having a the ability to express their displeasure. I just voiced my displeasure with the state of Northwestern football but I’m also not crazy to think Fitzgerald woke up one day and suddenly forgot how to recruit, coach and develop players to win in this program.

This isn’t a program like Florida State, USC or Tennessee where patience is needed and trusting the process is a prerequisite to watching football on Saturday afternoon. It’s understandable for fans of those programs to have higher expectations than what they’re seeing on the field.

Northwestern is in a totally different universe when it comes to expectations for the football program. And really, any program at Northwestern because of the academic requirements to get into the university. For Fitzgerald to be coming off a division title and an average of 9.25 wins per year over the last four, this is one of the best coaching jobs in college football.

To win that much at Northwestern? He should have a statue built for him outside Ryan Field.

There will be peaks and there will be valleys at Northwestern. We’ve seen it from 2013-2014 when the Wildcats went 5-7 back-to-back years. But they sandwiched 10-win seasons around that rebuilding phase. And for the rebuild and reload stage to only take two years and not a decade, well, fans are blue blood programs are envious of that quick turnaround.

Northwestern has been ranked in three of the last four seasons at the end of the year and while that won’t be the case this year, it’s absolutely crazy to think Fitzgerald can’t get them back in due time. Forgetting everything he’s meant and done for the university and football program because of one bad season, would be a colossal failure.

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