Northwestern will make defensive coordinator David Braun its interim head coach for the upcoming 2023 season, according to multiple reports on Thursday.
The promotion, which hasn’t been officially announced by the university, emerged just three days after head coach Pat Fitzgerald was fired following the university’s investigation into hazing and racism allegations surrounding the Wildcats’ football program.
Reports from ESPN, The Athletic and other outlets surfaced earlier in the week detailing that Braun’s elevation was expected.
Braun, who has never been a head coach before, joined Northwestern as its defensive coordinator in January following four years with North Dakota State, as well as time with Northern Iowa, UC Davis, Winona State and Culver-Stockton, according to a university release that announced his hiring.
He was the FCS Coordinator of the Year in 2021.
His unit helped spark a run to the FCS national championship in just his first season, and he won another one two years later when he earned the national coordinator honor.
“As someone who was born on Chicago’s north shore, this dream job also is a homecoming for me,” Braun said in the release. “Every day I meet more and more exceptional people at Northwestern, and I know our entire staff can’t wait to get our team on the field for spring ball.”
At the time, Braun was tasked with improving a Northwestern defense that ranked 12th in the Big Ten in points allowed per game (28.3), but that role significantly changed when the university started its investigation into hazing allegations — leading, initially, to a two-week unpaid suspension for Fitzgerald.
But after Northwestern released the investigation’s findings on Friday and announced Fitzgerald’s suspension, The Daily Northwestern, the university’s student paper, published a story that detailed how the program’s hazing included coerced sexual acts — creating a “really abrasive and barbaric culture,” one current player told the outlet — and that Fitzgerald might have known about the hazing.
Northwestern then fired Fitzgerald — the program’s coach since 2006 — two days later, and another report from The Daily Northwestern was published earlier that day about a “culture of enabling racism in the football program,” according to the outlet’s story.
“The decision comes after a difficult and complex evaluation of my original discipline decision imposed last week on Coach Fitzgerald for his failure to know and prevent significant hazing in the football program,” Northwestern president Michael Schill wrote in a statement Monday, according to ESPN. “Over the last 72 hours, I have spent a great deal of time in thought and in discussions with people who love our University — the Chair and members of our Board of Trustees, faculty leadership, students, alumni and Coach Fitzgerald himself.”
Fitzgerald, though, denied knowledge of hazing within the program, releasing a statement Monday night that said he had hired legal counsel and that he was surprised by the firing.
His attorney, Dan Webb, later told ESPN that Fitzgerald planned to pursue legal action, though no lawsuit had been filed at the time.
But his firing opened a vacancy, which the Wildcats filled by promoting Braun.
He will be tasked with guiding the program through what has already become a tumultuous preseason ahead of their 2023 campaign, which begins against Rutgers on Sept. 3.
