The Northwestern University scandal over hazing, including practices labeled as “sexual abuse” by one former football player, has already led to the firing of football coach Pat Fitzgerald and baseball coach Jim Foster. It’s also led to lawsuits against the school from former Wildcats’ football players and a former women’s volleyball player. So far, however, athletic director Derrick Gragg’s job has appeared safe, with Northwestern president Michael Schill saying Monday he has “no conversation ongoing about [Gragg’s] employment.”
The handling of this situation from Gragg (Northwestern’s AD since 2021) has drawn lots of criticism, though. And that intensified Monday around a new Chicago Tribune report on Gragg’s 2015 book 40 Days of Direction: Life Lessons from the Talented Ten.
Northwestern AD Derrick Gragg, under scrutiny for hazing scandal, offers questionable advice about women — ‘man’s greatest distraction’ — in book.
@angie_leventis with the story. https://t.co/sOGeqaL9Pk— Mitch Pugh📰 (@SCMitchP) July 25, 2023
HAHAHAHAHAH omg THIS MAN OVERSEES WOMENS SPORTS!
Another chapter is titled “Women: Our Greatest Distraction.”https://t.co/yFasGdgpGn— Kalyn Kahler (@kalynkahler) July 25, 2023
He literally titled a chapter “Women: Our Greatest Distraction.”
This was written by Derrick Gragg, Northwestern’s AD. He oversees all of the Wildcats’ men’s and women’s sports teams … https://t.co/LR5ihtPCJK
— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) July 25, 2023
Some highlights from that story:
Gragg’s book, “40 Days of Direction: Life Lessons from the Talented Ten,” is billed as a blueprint “not only for young men who seek to become college athletes, but for all young men who aspire to become successful,” according to the cover. While most of the writing covers guidance like prioritizing academics and avoiding trouble, two chapters that focus on relationships with women stand out as markedly different in tone and language.
…Gragg said in an email to the Tribune that he wrote the book as a reflection of his own experiences as a young Black man “fulfilling my dream” of playing Division I football.
“The audience I was speaking to was primarily young men in similar circumstances who are looking for role models as they pursue their own dreams both as college athletes and in life,” he said. “One of the most important lessons that I sought to convey to my young, male readers is that all women should be treated with respect at all times. This is a belief I have sought to champion in both my personal life and throughout my entire career — including in my most recent position overseeing inclusion across the entire NCAA.”
…Earlier in that chapter, Gragg decries the portrayal of women — particularly women of color — on reality television and music videos, yet the language seems to evoke sexist tropes and problematic stereotypes.
“I often feel sorry for those women, despite the fact that they are making a profit from selling out in front of thousands, even millions, of people who watch the shows each week,” he writes. “There is nothing worse than seeing a beautiful, intelligent woman disrespect herself and those around her. All you have to do is turn on a hip-hop music video or one of the several awful reality television shows to see women degrading themselves shaking it for cameras and audiences. Music videos portray women as booty-shaking sex-kittens or materialistic gold-diggers. Many of those women simply do not seem to have a sense of self and who they really are or where they come from at all. However, regardless of what you see or hear, there are very good, upwardly mobile, smart women out there. You probably encounter them every day at school or in the community.”
Gragg goes on to tell readers to always be respectful “even when you encounter a female who seems to disrespect herself,” because “no matter how a woman may look on the outside, she is someone’s daughter.”
And that’s before you get to the “Women: Our Greatest Distraction” chapter, which has highlights including “I love all the women in my life, but I have found that maintaining my relationships with them can be more than challenging. Therefore, I do not think that I am overstating things or exaggerating when I say that a female is often a man’s greatest distraction.” So that’s a fun thing to have come out about Gragg (whose personal playing experience was as a wide receiver with Vanderbilt from 1988-91; he went into academic leadership after that).
It’s interesting to have that come out one day after Schill endorsed Gragg’s leadership (and even his lack of public commentary so far on this scandal) in an interview with The Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper that broke many of the details of the hazing scandal. The key part there:
“Dr. Gragg is relatively new to the University. Most of the activity that has been churned up happened before he came here. The decision will be my decision in the end, informed by conversations with our trustees and our attorneys.”
“There’s no conversation ongoing about his employment. I am supporting him, I am meeting with him about the prospective steps, but there is no process, conversation or discussion of his employment status. He is the athletic director. If there should be allegations, just like anybody else involved, we will investigate that.”
Of course, comments in a 2015 book could not be used to fire Gragg for cause, especially with the university hiring him six years after its publication and thus at least potentially aware of what was in that book at that point. But these remarks do not paint Gragg in a good light. That book was published during his second stint as an athletic director at Tulsa (where he worked in that role from 2013-21; he was previously the AD at Eastern Michigan from 2006-2013).
Those aren’t great comments from someone in a role overseeing both male and female athletes, which Gragg was at all of those schools. And they’re particularly bad comments for the AD of a school that’s currently seeing many allegations around sexual abuse. We’ll see what happens next for Gragg.
