EVANSTON, Ill. — Mark Jackson had never visited Northwestern. By the time he first stepped on campus, he had already agreed to leave Villanova and take over as the school’s new athletic director.
“My wife, she was like, ‘Aren’t you going to go visit the campus?'” Jackson said Tuesday, less than a week after he left Villanova to take the job sight unseen. “I was like, I don’t need to, I’ve talked to enough people that said this place is just off the charts.”
Jackson, 51, had been athletic director at Villanova since 2015, overseeing a department that won 34 Big East championships in various sports and two men’s basketball NCAA tournament titles.
The Boston-area product was an administrator at the University of Southern California during the dominant run its football team had under coach Pete Carroll and at Syracuse before taking over at Villanova. He also worked in the NFL for the Oakland Raiders and New England Patriots, and has been around some of the most successful coaches from Bill Belichick to Carroll to Jay Wright.
Jackson wasn’t necessarily looking to leave Villanova. But Northwestern clearly has plenty going for it besides its Big Ten membership and sterling academic reputation.
The school just north of Chicago has in recent years invested heavily in its athletic facilities, building the sparkling $270 million Walter Athletics Center and Ryan Fieldhouse indoor practice facility located along Lake Michigan. The basketball arena got a major overhaul. The biggest project of all is happening at the moment, with a new Ryan Field being constructed on the site of the old football stadium.
The football team will play most of its home games the next two years at a temporary lakefront stadium that opened Saturday to rave reviews, with its views of the water and the Chicago skyline. The Wildcats broke in their temporary home by beating Miami (Ohio) 13-6.
The program was one of the country’s biggest surprises last year, winning eight games and a bowl berth in coach David Braun’s first season. The men’s basketball team made its second straight NCAA tournament.
There are also lingering scars. Besides helping Northwestern navigate a new landscape that includes NIL collectives and the possibility that schools will be able to directly compensate athletes while attempting to regulate payments from boosters, Jackson might also have to help the school heal.
“As I mentioned to my staff this morning, doing the right thing isn’t always easy, but it’s always right,” Jackson said. “We’re going to commit to that. Are we going to be perfect? Probably not. But we’re going to proactively educate around the pitfalls around everything, whether that’s academic integrity, you look at gambling, to what consent means on a college campus.”
Jackson takes over after former AD Derrick Gragg was moved into an advisory role with the university following a hazing and abuse scandal that engulfed the department.
The university initially suspended longtime football coach Pat Fitzgerald after allegations of hazing and abuse within the team. An investigation by attorney Maggie Hickey of law firm ArentFox Schiff did not find “sufficient” evidence that the coaching staff knew about ongoing hazing but concluded there were “significant opportunities” to find out about it.
With public pressure mounting, school president Michael Schill fired Fitzgerald. Gragg was on vacation at the time of the controversy and never addressed the team in person. Fitzgerald is suing the school for wrongful termination.
Later, the Chicago Tribune reported that a Northwestern investigation substantiated accusations of bullying behavior by baseball coach Jim Foster, who was hired by Gragg. Foster was not fired until after the investigation became public.
A separate investigation led by former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch recommended Northwestern enhance its hazing-prevention training. The school has taken steps to help prevent hazing and report misconduct.
Jackson mentioned the “uncompromising philosophy” of “treating each other well” and vowed to examine how Northwestern oversees each team.
“When you’re a head coach overseeing 110 football players versus a lacrosse team that may have 26 women, the challenges are different,” Jackson said. “Each program, I think, requires nuances. We want somebody immersed in that program to work with the head coach. Whether that’s fundraising, whether that’s compliance, whether it’s ticketing, the academic piece.
“I want our administrators in the weeds and connected to each and every program.”