When Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald walked into his team's locker room on Nov. 29, 2014, after his team's season-ending loss to rival Illinois, he was deep in his thoughts. His team had just failed in a big moment, and had missed out on bowl eligibility for the second year in a row.
But, Fitzgerald thought to himself, it was unfair to pin that failure on the players. "I was very self-critical," Fitzgerald said of that moment. "I thought that I really failed the team. We had 30-plus guys out in [that] game, and... it was my fault, as the leader of the program, I didn't do enough to get the next group of guys ready.