Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald has been through tragedies in sports, but he said that doesn’t mean he has all the answers to help Michigan State and Nebraska cope with the deaths of punters Mike Sadler and Sam Foltz.
“How do you best support the families who lost their sons, their brothers?” Fitzgerald said Monday. “I don’t have a blueprint for that.”
Big Ten coaches attending the conference’s media days at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place expressed sympathy for the deaths of the two players, who died early Sunday in a car accident while attending a kicking camp in Wisconsin.
Sadler completed his Michigan State career in 2014, while Foltz was a senior who was named Big Ten Punter of the Year last fall. Nebraska chose not to attend media days.
Perhaps no other Big Ten coach understands the agony of coping with the death of a teammate or coach as Fitzgerald, who was promoted to head coach by his alma mater in 2006, eight days after Randy Walker died of a heart attack.
As an NU linebacker, he was a teammate of defensive back Marcel Price, who died in 1995, and fullback Matt Hartl and defensive tackle Bobby Russ, both of whom died in 1999 when Fitzgerald was an assistant at Colorado. He returned to NU as an assistant coach in 2001, the year safety Rashidi Wheeler died during a summer training session.
“(For) some young men this is their first time dealing with death, let alone a tragic (one),” Fitzgerald said. “Some young men, this takes them back to someone they lost and opens up wounds again. And then you’ve got another group that’s really confused.
“You’ve got to use all the resources you have at your disposal. … Football kind of goes from the front seat to the back seat for a while while we work through this thing called life.”
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh echoed Fitzgerald’s sentiments.
“Knowing (Nebraska coach) Mike Riley, it will be a team effort — a family that gets through this,” Harbaugh said.
Northwestern linebacker Anthony Walker said: “I’m pretty sure it will make their team much closer. The leaders will have to step up, and I know this year will be a tribute to (Foltz). You have to embrace every moment. You can be here today, gone tomorrow.”
Fitzgerald said players can come together through their sport and the memory of their former teammates.
“At a certain point the players are going to look at you and say, ‘We’re going to get back to doing what we love to do,’ ” Fitzgerald said, “because that’s what they would want us to do.”
Shannon Ryan and Teddy Greenstein
Penn State
Although James Franklin is entering his third season as coach of the Nittany Lions, some might view it as his first. Franklin and his staff now have 85 scholarships available after the lifting of sanctions against the university in the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
“This is an exciting and pivotal time for Penn State football,” Franklin said. “It’s really going to be important for the development of our guys, development of our program as a whole.”
Penn State finished 7-6 the last two seasons, and Franklin must replace quarterback Christian Hackenberg and key defensive linemen while also facing higher expectations from fans.
He said was proud of how his players and coaches handled a situation few teams face.
“There’s very high expectations at Penn State, and there should be,” Franklin said. “I also would say that there’s very few programs that would have been able to come through what we’ve come through with the type of success that we’ve had, two bowl games in a row. Never had a losing season through the challenges.”
Franklin also addressed the challenges of recruiting while allegations from the Joe Paterno years continue to surface.
“It’s kind of a unique situation because you’re having conversations about things that you, your staff, your players have nothing to do with and happened over 40 years ago,” Franklin said. “But you just want to make sure that you have open lines of communication, that you’re as transparent as you possibly can be.”
Michal Dwojak
Minnesota
The interim label is gone from coach Tracy Claeys’ title, but he paid homage to the coach he succeeded.
“Everything we’ve built has been built on the principles with Coach (Jerry) Kill, and everybody in the football program was at the University of Minnesota because of him,” Claeys said. “We’ve had as good an offseason as we’ve had and looking forward to see our kids compete because they expect better themselves also.”
Claeys served as interim coach after Kill suddenly announced his retirement for health reasons seven games into last season. The Gophers finished 5-7 but were invited to the Quick Lane Bowl, which they won against Central Michigan for their first bowl victory in seven years.
The former defensive coordinator will have to replace the production of receiver KJ Maye, who caught five touchdown passes last season and finished with 773 receiving yards. Part of the solution will be running the ball more, which Claeys said will help eliminate negative-yardage plays.
Claeys has no such uncertainty at quarterback. Mitch Leidner returns for his senior season after throwing for 2,701 yards with 14 touchdowns and 11 interceptions as he looks to lead on and off the field.
“It’s easy to follow a kid like that,” Claeys said, “who every time he steps on the football field gives it his best and all he wants is a win for the University of Minnesota.”
Michal Dwojak
Purdue
Coach Darrell Hazell started his opening remarks by talking about a billboard on northbound Interstate 65 promoting his program.
“The first year I saw it I said, ‘It’s OK,’ ” Hazell said. “The second and third year I said, ‘You know what, it’s starting to bother me a little bit.’ The sign said, ‘The train is coming.’ And in the back of my mind I said, ‘At some point in time, the train has to get here. It has to arrive.’
“That sign’s no longer there. It’s been 31/2 years in the making for us to get to this point. We’re at a great place right now.”
That remains to be seen. The Boilermakers are coming off a 2-10 season in which they won one Big Ten game. In three years at Purdue, Hazell is 6-30 and 2-22 in the conference.
“I don’t look at it as a three-year funk,” he said. “I look at it as a growing process. A lot of times on the outside you can’t see the things that are happening throughout the program where you’re making progress.”
In the offseason, Purdue named new offensive and defensive coordinators, promoting Terry Malone from tight ends coach and hiring former Nebraska linebackers coach Ross Els.
Hazell said he’s still a few weeks away from naming a starting quarterback. Sophomore David Blough started eight games in 2015, passing for 1,574 yards, but redshirt freshman Elijah Sindelar looked promising in spring practice.
“Dave’s obviously got an edge coming out of spring football,” Hazell said. “Both of those guys, David and Elijah, are more than capable of winning a lot of football games.”
Hazell’s outlook is bright for the season.
“Our morale is off the chart,” he said. “We’re ready to go.”
Shannon Ryan
Rutgers
It takes a lot for a coach to leave the comfort of playing for national championships at Ohio State for the unknown at Rutgers, but there was enough for new Scarlet Knights coach Chris Ash to make the leap.
The former Ohio State co-defensive coordinator did his research before leaving for his first head coaching job and found what he thought he needed to build a competitive Big Ten program.
“It’s one thing to say you’re part of the Big Ten,” Ash said, “but to compete and be one of the elite teams of the Big Ten, I wanted to make sure if I was going to leave and take on a head-coaching position that we had the right administrative support to make that happen.”
Ash takes over a program that was filled with off-the-field issues last season, including the suspension of coach Kyle Flood for three games. The Scarlet Knights finished 4-8 and 1-7 in the Big Ten.
The new coach is wasting little time making his mark. Ash brought in TCU graduate transfer Zach Allen at quarterback, though he said four players will compete for the position.
“As I look back and we evaluate each position group coming out of the spring, we felt like we had to make a change in that room,” Ash said. “We had to do something to help the football team, so we brought in Zach. They’ll all get an opportunity to prove what they can do, and fairly quickly in camp we’ll start to identify the one or two that give us the best chance to have success.”
Michal Dwojak
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