August 2, 2010
An Interview With:
NORTHWESTERN
COACH PAT FITZGERALD
THE MODERATOR: Next we're joined by
Pat Fitzgerald.
COACH FITZGERALD: I appreciate it. It's
great to be back here. Not a long trip for me. And
I appreciate Bret's (Bielema’s) ice breaker. I'm
pretty good with the media. So I'm not going to kill
you with kindness; I'm just going to give you the
facts and we'll go from there.
It seems like yesterday and based on the
last play seems like forever we've been at a
football game. The experience down at the
Outback Bowl against Auburn was one that was
great motivation for our young men in the
off-season. And as Julie alluded to with the
number of starters we have coming back, we're
excited about 2010. We have 17 wins over the last
two years.
And that foundation of success, I think, has
provided us with motivation to take the next step.
And what is that next step? First and foremost it's
going to be to go to a bowl game for three straight
years, something that never happened in our
program before. It all happens because we believe
we've got great players.
And on offense it's another year at
Northwestern, so that means another new
quarterback and another new face, and it's Dan
Persa's opportunity to take over the leadership of
our offense and to take over the leadership of our
football team. And if he follows in the footsteps of
C.J. Bachér and Mike Kafka -- that's why I'm
sleeping pretty well at night.
We've got a lot of guys up front. We think
we can play eight or nine young men up front that
started football games for us. We've got four or
five of our top rushers and eight of our top ten
receivers back, so we've got a lot of skill back on
offensive.
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Defensively we returned six starters.
Again, we did go nine deep up front on the D-line.
Our linebacking corps may be the deepest unit on
our team. You'll get a chance to visit with Nate
Williams and Quentin Davie as we move forward.
Quentin is here at the kick-off weekend.
And we've got six guys that have started
football games in the secondary.
So when you look at it, 15, 16 returning
starters, along with 15 other players that have
started football games, we're a little over 30
players that have been in a starting role coming
back. That might be the most experience and the
most depth that we've had in the kicking game.
Stefan Demos is back. He's going to handle
kick-offs and our placements to start the year, and
I'm hoping Brandon Williams will be our starter as
punter, and then John Henry Pace is back as our
long snapper.
As I alluded to originally, the experience
we had at the Outback Bowl coming back off of
that game, really our players have done a
tremendous job taking over ownership. And it's
been a great motivation for the off-season.
Our guys are hungry. They're driven.
They've been focused, with this being a little later
this year, having the kick-off. We're going to be
practicing this time next week. Looking forward to
getting back with them.
Academically we had a tremendous year
last year. 2009 may go down as our best year
academically. We have a quarter system at NU.
We had 171 players above a 3.0, and a team GPA
in the winter quarter above a 3.0 for the second
time in school history. So our team GPA is just
below a 3.0. Had 29 First-Team Academic All-Big
Ten performers last year, and two Academic
All-Americans.
We're having the success in keeping the
academic integrity, which we should. And our guys
accomplished 1,158 hours socially giving back to
the Northwestern, Evanston, and Chicagoland
community.
So 2010, a lot to be excited for. More
importantly, a lot of work to do. And we're going to
get that started right away when our guys report
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next Monday -- or Saturday and Sunday, and then
we get it going Monday morning.
With that, how about questions.
Q. Coach, talk about the idea of playing
Illinois at Wrigley Field later this season.
COACH FITZGERALD: It's going to be a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our young men to
go down there. There hasn't been a college
football game there since the '30s, and there's not
been a football game at Wrigley Field, if you
include the Bears, since the '70s.
So this could be a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity. Obviously the support we've gotten
from our leadership to start a major marketing
campaign, we got a great home schedule at Ryan
Field, and the crowning jewel will be that game at
Wrigley Field for our fans and our students.
And especially for our student-athletes.
It's going to be pretty neat to run out where Gale
Sayers and Dick Butkus and George Halas were
on that field. That's going to be really special.
Q. You're obviously the youngest
coach in the conference. Kind of old school in
terms of the ideas related to expansion and title
game, all that stuff. Have you come around
somewhat in the last few months, or are you
still where you were before?
COACH FITZGERALD: Yeah, from my
standpoint whatever is better for the conference is
better for Northwestern. And I trust in the
leadership in Commissioner (Jim) Delany and
directors of athletics and presidents from the
direction of where our conference is going.
I'm excited. I said -- I think initially my
quote was as long as we expand like we did with
the Beast from the East in Penn State, I'll be
excited. More so as a fan and as a former player
in the Big Ten. And Commissioner Delany was
able to do that with Nebraska.
So it's going to be exciting. Change is in
the air. And who knows where that's going to go.
But I trust in the leadership, and look forward to
seeing where things are going to go in the future.
Q. Three in a row at Kinnick Stadium. I
think four out of five against the Hawkeyes.
Given how strong that program has been lately,
what's been the key for you guys beating them
consistently?
COACH FITZGERALD: An oblong football
that bounces a lot of different ways. We've been
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very fortunate. I can't put my finger on why we've
had a little bit of a good run.
But at the end of the day I think we've
played pretty well. We've executed. We've won
the turnover battle, I think, if you look back over
those games.
That's typically an indicator of success in
the field, and we've just been very fortunate. I
think there's two programs in Northwestern and
Iowa that have a lot of respect for each other, and I
think they've just been really hard-fought games
and a lot of fun to be on both sides of the sidelines.
We just have been fortunate to be on the winning
edge.
Q. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think
the last couple of years when you've come here
you've talked about a clear-cut starting No. 1
quarterback. Even though you've lost a guy
and had a replace, replace, now you've had
another clear-cut, how much does it help your
program knowing here we are a month before
the season knowing who that guy's going to
be?
COACH FITZGERALD: As Bret alluded to
earlier with a quarterback coming back, Dan's
played a lot of football for us. He started last year
against Iowa and Iowa City, came in second half
against Penn State, but he had also played the
year before in the kicking game.
It helps you sleep a little bit better at night.
But, more importantly, Mick McCall and our
offensive staff do a great job developing our
quarterbacks. And they're doing a great job
developing the next guys in Evan Watkins and our
two freshmen that will be on campus starting on
Saturday.
We think we have a good plan on
developing quarterbacks. I believe our system is
quarterback friendly. It's amazing, when you come
out of the Outback Bowl, I get a bunch of calls from
quarterbacks nationally. So you throw the ball 79
times. Cool. Okay. So obviously it's pretty
quarterback friendly from the standpoint of
development, too.
Q. Where would you like to see the
running game after camp, and where is that
group right now?
COACH FITZGERALD: Well, as I alluded
to earlier, the amount of production that we have
coming back, first I'd like to see one of our
tailbacks potentially take over the role.
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 I remember back when I played against
Michigan, and it just seemed like every town there
was a different back, and they just kept hitting and
hitting and hitting you. And obviously there was
also some guys like (Tshimanga) Biakabutuka that
were back there that took over the lion's share of
the role. I'd like to see that evolve.
I'd like to see our offensive line stay
healthy in camp and come together a little better
than a we did a year ago.
We have good balance, when you look at
the stats. We just have to be more efficient. And if
you want to win the championship in this league,
you have got to be able to run the football
efficiently. We define that by four or more on first
down, half or more on second down, pick it up on
third and fourth, and score on the goal line.
It's not a complicated equation, but we
definitely need to be better there. And we put a
strong focus in that in the spring, and we'll go right
back there to start a camp.
Q. It's been eight months. How many
times have you watched that last play? And
looking back on it, is it significant or was it just
one more play in a long season?
COACH FITZGERALD: Well, significant
because it was the last play. It would have been
very significant if we executed and I would have
coached it better. So we would have gotten it
done.
But that was about one of about 55 plays
that we came back -- we flew back after the game,
and a couple days later I had to get on a flight out
to LA to go out recruiting. I had not watched the
game until I got on the plane. The minute I got off
the plane the game was over for me from an
emotional standpoint.
And, you know, it was a great infomercial
for us. Four and a half hours of our guys
competing their tail off. We faced a ton of
adversity. Mike Kafka arguably played the best
game in our quarterbacking history at
Northwestern, and then there's a few throws you'd
like to have back. But there was a neat interview
with him and Chris Martin after the game in the
tunnel how Mike alluded to kind of the hallmark of
our program, and that's what's important now.
And Mike looked at it and said, hey, there
were some throws I'd like to have back, but I had a
blast. And I just kept on battling and fighting
through adversity. To hear that from our outgoing
quarterback, I think our young men believe in what
we're trying to accomplish as a program.
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And we'll get there. But it's been a great
source of motivation, I promise you that, because
that was one play of about 50 that if it would have
gone to the left instead of right or the right instead
of left, we'd be bowl champions.
So a lot of games between now and then.
Q. Your teams are fun to watch. You've
been very successful. What's the ceiling on
attendance and what do you do to improve that
at home?
COACH FITZGERALD: We need to keep
winning, number one. The direction that Morton
Schapiro, our president, and our board of trustees
and Jim Phillips have gone now with adding Mike
Polisky as our associate AD in charge of external
affairs, giving him a budget to be able to market
here in Chicago, and to continue to do the things
we can control on the field. That's obviously the 12
Saturdays of winning football games.
But I think our fan base is more impressed
by the culture and the quality of young people that
we have within our program, the success
academically, how unselfish our guys are in the
community.
I just believe a byproduct of that is success
on the field. You get the right culture and
chemistry and develop the right kind of attitude and
learn how to be successful on adversity.
We'll keep building. Our goal is to take the
next step. Go to our third bowl game, things of that
nature. The only way you do that is take it, the old
coachism, one day at a time. But, literally, you've
got to go to work and improve every day and just
stay humble in the way you approach it. And our
guys will. They will.
Q. If you could appraise Persa as
specifically as possible, what do you think he
does well and what does he need to work on.
COACH FITZGERALD: Pound for pound,
he's our best conditioned athlete. He was named
our Iron Cat, which is our top point getter in the
off-season from strength, speed, and conditioning
standpoint. I'm pretty confident he'll win that again.
He kind of won that going away last year.
He's a tremendous leader off the field. He
first and foremost starts by leading by example.
He's the first to show and last to go. That's the
way you want your quarterback described.
But he has an uncanny ability to have
others around him want to be associated with him.
So everybody raises up to his level. He's had two
really good, I guess, mentors, so to speak, in
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teammates to watch in C.J. and Mike. And now it's
his turn.
And he's chomping at the bit. On the field
he can do everything we asked our quarterbacks to
do. Number one, he understands the tempos that
we want to play at and he understands
schematically what we want to do. And I think the
best hallmark of a quarterback is he gets on the
field, he makes the other ten guys that much
better. I believe that's Danny Persa.
You'll get a chance to visit with him as we
go through the next couple of days. You'll see the
look in his eye and intensity in his eye, and I'm
fired to jump in this season with him.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.
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