Northwestern University head baseball coach Jim Foster has been accused of “bullying and abusive” behavior, with claims that he made “an inappropriate comment regarding a female staff member and spoke negatively about his staff to other staff members.”
Reports of Jim Foster’s alleged behavior come just after the university’s football team faced allegations of hazing. According to Chicago Tribune, current and former players, as well as alumni, have said that they “alerted university administration — including President Michael Schill and athletic director Derrick Gragg — of problematic behavior from Foster starting last fall before the team kicked off its 2023 season.” The reported complaints sparked a human resources investigation, which allegedly found “sufficient evidence” that the coach had “engaged in bullying and abusive behavior.”
Northwestern baseball head coach Jim Foster throws the ceremonial first pitch of the game between the Chicago Cubs and the Colorado Rockies at Wrigley Field on September 18, 2022, in Chicago, Illinois. (Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images)
The HR document obtained by the Tribune claimed that evidence of the investigation had been shared with the Department of Athletics and Recreation “to take appropriate remedial action,” though that remedial action remains unknown. Foster said that university policy prevents him from speaking out on the matter.
The HR document does not go into great detail about the complaints against Foster. But current and former players and people close to the program who spoke to the Tribune anonymously for fear of retaliation said Foster’s interactions with players and staff could be cold at times, and at other times, combative.
There were incidents, they said, when Foster would launch into expletive-laced tirades directed at staff. Other times, they claim, he discouraged players from seeing the team trainer, or pressured injured players to speed up their timeline for returning from injury in fear they’d lose their spot on the team.
As Breitbart News reported, the Northwestern football program took a hit this week over accusations of hazing and “barbaric” sex acts.
“An investigation into the allegations headed by Maggie Hickey of ArentFox Schiff, a former inspector general of Illinois, determined that the allegations were credible. The school subsequently suspended head coach Pat Fitzgerald for two weeks without pay and made several other changes to the football program to mitigate the problem,” noted the report.
Head coach Pat Fitzgerald of the Northwestern Wildcats watches the team warm up before the game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Memorial Stadium on October 2, 2021, in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Steven Branscombe/Getty Images)
“But new and shocking details about the incidents have now been leveled by one current and one former player in the pages of the school’s student newspaper, the New York Post reported,” it added. “The former player claimed that team members practiced what they called ‘running,’ in which a player would be held down by a group of fellow students while they dry-humped him from behind.”
Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.