Former QB Lloyd Yates puts his voice and face on hazing scandal at Northwestern

Lloyd Yates wasn't the first former Northwestern athlete to file a lawsuit against the school, and it's expected that he won't be the last, according to his attorney.

But Yates is the first of now four former Northwestern football players to put his name on a lawsuit and thus put a face to the alleged culture of hazing that apparently ran rampant on Wildcats teams, not just with football, for decades across multiple sports.

Yates and others allege a pattern of gross negligence on the part of coaches and administrators, some of whom are accused of knowing about hazing behavior that went several lines past team-building and into sexual misconduct and racism. In the case of a former Northwestern volleyball player who filed a lawsuit of her own Monday, the coach is directly accused of causing harm.

None of the lawsuits thus far implicates baseball coach Jim Foster, who was fired this month after just one season on the job, a disaster on-field — Northwestern was 10-40 — and off, as university HR opened an investigation into his behavior just months after he was hired, three coaches left the program in February before the regular season had even begun, and at least 15 players entered the transfer portal.

Citing multiple sources, 670 The Score reported that Foster wasted no time creating a toxic culture that included racially insensitive comments, inappropriate comments about a female staff member and pushing players to return from injury too early. Players, assistant baseball coaches and other members of staff reportedly made multiple attempts to speak with athletic director Derrick Gragg about what was happening, and Gragg blew them off.

At this point, it's putting it kindly to say that Northwestern's athletics program is in turmoil. The hazing investigations have cost the jobs of its baseball coach and longtime football head coach Pat Fitzgerald, who denies having any knowledge of hazing in his program and has invited heavy scrutiny of Gragg and school president Michael Schill.

Because of the culture surrounding sports, even at a place that isn't an athletic powerhouse, it's not hard to find defenders on social media bemoaning that these accusers are looking for a quick payday or are soft or unable to deal with "boys being boys" in the case of the football and baseball players.

As difficult of a concept as it seems to be for some to grasp, your body is your own. Period.

Being dunked in an ice bucket by multiple older teammates while another dry humps you is abuse. Being forced to walk naked through a gauntlet of also-naked teammates is abuse. Being forced to drink until you pass out or forced to do naked pull-ups or forced to tell embarrassing or sexually explicit stories over a bus loudspeaker — because not taking part in any of those things will lead to you being held down and dry-humped — is abuse.

Those were some of the allegations made in Yates' lawsuit, which involved two unnamed former players as targets of the alleged hazing.

It doesn't matter if you endured it so you think others should have to as well. You shouldn't ever have had to endure such treatment, and keeping that cycle going as some sort of sick "tradition" is flat-out wrong.

Yates said similar on Monday, when he noted that everyone involved was an injured party, regardless of which side of the abuse they were on.

"We were all victims, and I want to make that clear," Yates said. "No matter what role — if you were being hazed or on the perpetrating side — it was just a culture that you had to find a position within."

A Chicago native who entered Northwestern in 2015 as a quarterback and was later switched to receiver, Yates' great-grandfather, father and brother all graduated from the school. Wearing a light gray windowpane suit and dark tie on Monday, with glasses on as he read from his statement, he was flanked not just by civil rights attorney Ben Crump and his parents but also by two former teammates who are quoted in his lawsuit: Warren Miles Long and Simba Short.

"We were thrown into a culture where physical, emotional and sexual abuse was normalized," Yates said. "No teammate I knew liked hazing. We were all victims. But the culture was so strong we felt we had to go [along] with it to survive, to be respected and to earn the trust within the football program. There was a code of silence that felt insurmountable to break. Speaking up could lead to consequences that affected playing time and could warrant further abuse."

Yates' lawsuit also alleges that a strength and conditioning coach was "ran," the term used for the dry-humping assault, by players in front of the team and other coaches. He alleges other coaches were hazed as well.

In a statement to ESPN, Northwestern said, "We continue to review the allegations and will take the appropriate measures based on the outcome of that process."

Yates told the Chicago Tribune that he can't watch football anymore, a sentiment echoed by former offensive lineman Ramon Diaz Jr., who played at Northwestern roughly a decade before Yates. Diaz, one of several players who has detailed accusations of racist incidents on the team, told The Daily Northwestern that after graduating he'd have nightmares and flashbacks of things that occurred in the locker room and that he wasn't able to watch football for five years.

None of this should be normalized. It is not the price of playing a sport.

“I hope three things will come out of this lawsuit,” Yates said. “I want justice for all the victims of this horrific hazing. I want closure for myself and hundreds of other Northwestern football players who suffered in silence … Lastly, I want protection for future players. Northwestern failed to protect us.”