Northwestern Hazing Lawsuit Names ACC Commissioner Phillips
The athletic department hazing scandal at Northwestern has now spilled into another Power Five conference.
On Wednesday, attorneys representing the first plaintiff to file a hazing lawsuit against Northwestern University filed a second suit that included ACC commissioner Jim Phillips as a defendant.
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Like the first lawsuit, this action, filed in Illinois state court, is being brought forward by a second unnamed former Wildcats football player. In addition to Phillips, it names as defendants Northwestern University; the school’s current and former presidents Michael Schill and Morton Schapiro; former football coach Pat Fitzgerald; and current athletic director Derrick Gragg.
Phillips served as Northwestern’s AD from 2008 to 2021. At one point, Phillips had been widely considered the lead candidate to replace Jim Delany as the Big Ten commissioner, before the job went to Kevin Warren. Phillips subsequently was hired to take the top post at the ACC in 2021. Earlier this year, Phillips’ existing five-year contract was extended through 2029.
The latest lawsuit accuses Phillips and the other defendants of “extensive, far-reaching, and ongoing complicity and involvement in the systemic abuse of Northwestern student athletes.”
“Certainly his tenure as athletic department head overlaps with the allegations that were made,” Patrick Salvi II, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, said in a press conference. “As we were contemplating the best path forward it seemed appropriate to sue Jim Phillips.”
Philips didn’t immediately return a request for comment sent to an ACC spokesperson.
Salvi said that black Northwestern football players had at one point brought allegations of racial discrimination within the team to Phillips’ attention, but that the then-athletic director failed to appropriately respond. He also accused Phillips of failing to respond to allegations of sexual harassment made by Northwestern cheerleaders.
In 2021, a former cheerleader named Hayden Richardson sued the university, saying she had been “sexually exploited” and subjected to ongoing “groping, harassment, and sexual touching” by alumni and “intoxicated football fans.” Richardson later settled with the school.
Though Phillips wasn’t named in Richardson’s suit, Salvi suggested Wednesday that a climate of sexual misconduct against cheerleaders was rampant and that the athletic department turned a blind eye.
Fitzgerald took the helm of the school’s football program in 2006 and compiled a record of 110-101 until he was fired on July 11, after initially receiving a two-week suspension.
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