Sports

Everton, a founding member of England’s Premier League that has fallen into financial crisis, faced yet more pain on Friday after it was given a 10-point penalty for breaching the league’s economic rules. The punishment, the largest points deduction in the league’s history, sent Everton to the bottom of the standings and left it facing the threat of relegation from England’s top division at the end of the season.

The penalty was not a surprise, as the Premier League had come under pressure to act by rival teams angered by Everton’s rule breaches. But it will deepen the crisis that has engulfed Everton as it operates under a cloud of hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, and it raised the prospect that a far more serious punishment could await wealthy rivals like Manchester City and Chelsea in separate financial cases.

An independent league commission hearing the case against Everton found that the club had breached the league’s profit and sustainability rules. It ruled the points deduction must be applied immediately, which dropped Everton to 19th place in the 20-team league and on the same points total, 4, as last-place Burnley.

At the end of each season, the three worst finishers in the Premier League — the world’s richest domestic sporting competition — are relegated out of the division and into the second-tier Championship.

Everton said it was “shocked and disappointed” by the scale of the penalty, which its interim chief executive, Colin Chong, called “disproportionate and wholly unjust.” The club immediately announced its intent to appeal.

The team’s perilous financial state has required regular cash infusions from external sources to allow the club to continue operating. The most recent loan came from 777 Partners, an American group that in September agreed to acquire the storied club. That deal has not yet been approved by the Premier League and the Financial Conduct Authority, a regulator, amid questions about 777 Partners’ own finances.

The Premier League referred Everton to an independent commission in March after Everton posted financial losses for the fifth straight year. Under the league’s regulations, teams are allowed to lose no more than 105 million pounds, or $130 million, over a three-year period. Everton acknowledged being in breach of those rules for the financial year through 2022.

The panel, according to a 41-page written judgment, agreed with the Premier League’s assessment that Everton had breached the allowed amount of losses by £19.5 million (almost $25 million).

The scale of the penalty in Everton’s case, though, suggested that a far larger punishment could await the league’s dominant team, Manchester City, which is facing its own accusations of financial rules violations.

City has been charged with 115 breaches of league regulations related to its financial declarations. Its case, now in its fifth year, is being heard by a similar panel to the one that decided the one against Everton.

The Premier League is also investigating another traditional powerhouse, Chelsea, amid recent revelations of improper conduct under its former ownership.

“This is a landmark moment in the history of the Premier League and one of its most famous clubs, and will cause shock waves — particularly in the board rooms of Chelsea and Manchester City,” said Simon Leaf, a partner and head of sport at Mishcon de Reya, a law firm based in London.

While the points deduction significantly increases the chances that Everton will suffer a costly demotion to the second tier for the first time in its history, the low point totals obtained so far by some of its relegation rivals may yet allow it to escape. Even with its 10-point penalty, Everton is only 2 points behind Luton Town, the team currently occupying 17th place — the final position offering safety, and a place in the league, for next season.

A spokesman for 777 Partners said the company had no comment on the punishment or how it might affect its proposed acquisition of Everton because that process remains ongoing.

Part of the reason Everton’s punishment was as harsh as it was, the panel said, was related to a claim, upheld by the panel, that the team had failed to engage with the league in good faith, an accusation the team continues to reject.

“Both the harshness and severity of the sanction imposed by the commission are neither a fair nor a reasonable reflection of the evidence submitted,” Everton said.

Everton blamed its ballooning losses on costs associated with a new stadium project and the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The Premier League countered in its claim that some of the losses were simply down to the poor running of the club, resulting in overspending on recruitment and salary costs. Under the rules, Everton has seven days to submit its appeal.

The size of the penalty is one point more than the previous record, 9, issued to Portsmouth after the club was forced into a form of bankruptcy protection in 2010. That fate may await Everton if its efforts to complete a sale of the club prove unsuccessful.

Everton’s agreement to sell to 777 Partners, an investment company based in Miami, has produced scrutiny of the latter’s operations and ability to remain a long-term sports investor. That deal with Everton’s current majority owner, Farhad Moshiri, contains contingencies for points deductions and even a possible relegation.

Mr. Moshiri, a British-Iranian businessman, would receive the entirety of the roughly 139 million pound sale price only if Everton is not docked points, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The amount 777 Partners will pay for Everton tumbles in stages based on the severity of any points deduction, a potential demotion out of the Premier League, and, if a relegation occurs, a failure to return to the top flight within a set period of time, according to the documents.

A comeback provides no guarantee of success, but few sports provide more comebacks than professional tennis.

They are arriving wave after wave, particularly in the women’s game, where returning to action after maternity has become more common.

After the WTA stars Elina Svitolina and Caroline Wozniacki came back last season, the trend is continuing in 2024, with Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber, both former No. 1 players and multiple major champions.

Both are new mothers who have been out of the game for more than a year and both will be in the draw as the 2024 season begins in earnest on Sunday with the Australian Open, the year’s first Grand Slam tournament, which Kerber won in 2016 and Osaka in 2019 and 2021.

“I’m so happy to see it,” said Kim Clijsters, the former world No. 1 from Belgium who made one of the most successful post-motherhood comebacks, winning the 2009 United States Open as a wild card. “I know when I started, some of the rules that are in place now were not in place. I know that Serena [Williams] definitely changed a lot of that: the different guidelines which just makes it easier for players to not feel the pressure, the pressure that female athletes feel to postpone a pregnancy. They might feel ready for it and want to do it, but because of the career and sponsors, they might keep postponing it.”

Significant obstacles remain, particularly for players who were not highly ranked before their maternity leaves or lack the financial means to travel on tour with their families and support teams. But the landscape is shifting.

Tennis has a history of mothers winning singles majors: The Australians Margaret Court and Evonne Goolagong did it in the 1970s and the 1980s before Clijsters. But the number of working mothers on tour has increased. Serena Williams reached four major singles finals, losing them all, after her return to the tour in 2018.

Osaka, 26, and Kerber, who will turn 36 on Thursday, are at different stages of their careers, but both are returning after more than a year away.

They will be joined at the Australian Open by Emma Raducanu, the big-surprise U.S. Open champion in 2021, who is coming back from multiple surgeries at age 21 after nearly eight months away. They all would have been joined in Melbourne by Rafael Nadal, one of the greatest players in history, if Nadal had not withdrawn because of a new injury suffered during his comeback tournament last week in Brisbane.

Nadal, a 22-time Grand Slam singles champion, missed nearly a year of action because of an injury to his left hip and psoas muscle that required surgery in June. In Brisbane, after two convincing victories full of winners and verve, he was beaten by Jordan Thompson in the quarterfinals. Nadal later announced that he had a small muscle tear that was not in the same spot as his previous injury.

Comebacks come with ample uncertainty, particularly at age 37. But the oft-injured Nadal plans to return to action again in what he has said is most likely his final season. His aim is to peak for the European clay court season, which will culminate with the French Open and the Summer Olympic tennis event, both staged at Roland Garros, where Nadal has been at his most dominant, winning a record 14 singles titles.

Osaka has more time on her side. She left the tour in late 2022 and said she briefly considered retirement because she was no longer finding joy in the game. But she is back after giving birth to a daughter in July and though she is ranked No. 833 and lost in the second round of her comeback tournament in Brisbane, she showed flashes of sparkling and overpowering form.

“It would be sad to lose Naomi to tennis at such an early age,” said Paul Annacone, the former coach of Pete Sampras, Roger Federer and Sloane Stephens. “It would definitely be a hit to the game, but I think if she stays healthy mentally and physically, I don’t see any reason that she can’t get back and contend and give herself chances at the latter stages of majors. But a lot of it is going to be how well the mind leads the body for her.”

Osaka’s first serve and groundstrokes remain some of the most potent weapons in the women’s game, and her big-bang base-line play is similar in approach to the leaders of the women’s game: No. 1 Iga Swiatek, No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 3 Elena Rybakina.

Many consider that Osaka’s mobility and variety need work, however, and while she has expressed a desire to become more versatile, she remains a one-surface threat with little experience or success on grass courts or clay. Still, a majority of the tour, including the Australian Open, is played on the hardcourts that suit Osaka’s high-risk game, and her eagerness to compete was evident in Brisbane.

“The most important thing I’ve heard from her is that she’s super motivated,” Clijsters said. “I think when she has that and the belief, I think she can do anything. Of course, to win a Slam, everything has to kind of fall into place. There are a lot of good players out there who are really hungry to win and who make it tough. But Naomi can definitely have a great run in this frame of mind.”

Clijsters has experienced successful and unsuccessful comebacks. When she ended her early retirement in 2009, she went on to win three majors before retiring again in 2012 because of nagging injuries and a desire to spend more time with her growing family. But when she returned to the tour again at age 36 in 2020, she struggled with the isolation on tour because of the pandemic and played just five singles matches over two years, losing them all.

She is now retired for good, living with her husband and three children in New Jersey and is honorary president of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

“Now that I’m older, and I look back on it, the best times in my career were those times when I was training for a big goal,” she said. “Holding up the trophy is a very short moment. What I think is the addicting part about it, is the part before the big moment.

“I think a lot of people on the outside struggle with accepting that once you’ve won a lot of Grand Slams and once you’ve been No. 1 in the world that you find enjoyment in playing tournaments and maybe losing early. It’s not fun to lose, don’t get me wrong, but there’s still an enjoyment in the preparation and in getting out there and trying to find solutions. Of course, the goal at the end of the day is holding up the trophy, but that’s not what drives you every day when you wake up. It’s the little goals.”

Osaka, like the others starting their comebacks, will be unseeded for the Australian Open, meaning they could have drawn anyone in the first round. She drew the No. 16 seed, Caroline Garcia, while Kerber will face Danielle Collins, a former Australian Open finalist who is also unseeded.

Kerber returned to competition at the United Cup, a mixed men’s and women’s team event. Her team, Germany, won the title, though she won just one of five singles matches. She can still move and read the flow of play beautifully, but her counterpunching game looks to many as underpowered at this stage.

But she, Osaka, Raducanu and Wozniacki have the potential to make seeded players suffer in Melbourne.

“They are all floaters, which is pretty scary,” said Jessica Pegula, the American ranked No. 5, referring to dangerous unseeded players who could land anywhere in the draw.

It should make for a gripping opening week, but the real thrills would come if Osaka or another member of the comeback crew can go deep in the second week, as well.

Mike Duggan and his hockey buddies were strapping on their gear one recent morning when their banter hopscotched, as it frequently does, to the subject of joint replacement surgeries.

Duggan, 74, the proud owner of an artificial hip, marveled at the sheer number of titanium body parts in the locker room. He gestured toward Mitch Boriskin, who was wiggling into a pair of skates along the opposite wall.

“I don’t think there’s an original part on you,” Duggan said.

Boriskin, 70, smiled. “Two fake knees, a spinal cord stimulator, 25 surgeries,” he began, as if reciting a box score.

“And one lobotomy,” Duggan interjected, as laughter rippled across the room.

All that titanium, at least, was being put to good use. Their team, the Oregon Old Growth, had joined dozens of others from around North America to compete this month at the Snoopy Senior hockey tournament in Santa Rosa, Calif., about 60 miles north of San Francisco.

The tournament has become a summertime ritual for hundreds of recreational players — all of them between 40 and 90 years old — who gather each year at Redwood Empire Ice Arena, where Charles M. Schulz, the creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip and a lifelong hockey fanatic, founded the event in 1975.

By now, everyone knows what to expect: The skating is slow, the wisecracks whiz by fast and the laughter flows as freely as the beer.

“If you like paint drying, you will be riveted,” said Larry Meredith, 82, the captain of the Berkeley Bears, a team in the tournament’s 70-plus division.

Playing sports can feel like a young person’s game. Maybe you compete through high school, perhaps find a regular pickup game or beer league after college. But, eventually, families and jobs and the various other encumbrances of adult life conspire to pull you away.

These senior skaters, though, represent a generation that has increasingly pushed back on this timeline. They understand how fitness and camaraderie can be beneficial for both body and mind. They hold on dearly to the games they love, even as their bodies beg them to reconsider.

“You don’t quit because you get old, you get old because you quit,” said Rich Haskell, 86, a player from New Port Richey, Fla. “A friend of mine died a couple years ago. He played hockey in the morning, died at night. You can’t do it better than that.”

The tournament has the unbent feel of a week-and-a-half long summer camp. Camper vans and R.V.s crowd the arena parking lot, where players drink beer, grill meat and fraternize between games.

The squad names this year — California Antiques, Michigan Oldtimers, Seattle Seniles, and Colorado Fading Stars, to name a few — nodded at players’ advanced age and evolved sense of humor.

“We used to just be the Colorado Stars,” said Rich Maslow, 74. “But then we turned 70.”

Maslow and his teammates were scheduled to play that day at 6:30 a.m., the earliest slot, which meant they had to assemble before sunrise.

“We all have to get up at 5:30 to pee anyway, so we might as well play some hockey,” said Craig Kocian, 78, of Arvada, Colo., as they dressed for the game.

Kocian described himself as having “adult onset hockey syndrome.” But many other participants began playing when they were children and let the game weave itself through the decades of their lives.

Among them was Terry Harper, 83, who played in 19 seasons as a defenseman in the N.H.L. When he retired, he threw away his equipment, he said, and for the next 10 years stayed away from the ice. But in 1992, a neighbor coaxed him to Santa Rosa, and Harper, who grew up playing in his backyard in Saskatchewan, felt some long dormant pleasure center reactivate in his brain.

“I came here and had the greatest time I’ve had in hockey, ever,” said Harper, who, it must be noted, won five Stanley Cups with the Montreal Canadiens. “There wasn’t the pressure, the travel. I found out hockey is fun.”

Harper, playing for the Bears, took his time on the ice. Changing directions, for one thing, required a couple more beats than it once did. But his stickhandling and anticipation betrayed his expertise, and he was smiling throughout the game, even after getting whacked in the face.

“I took a stick to my chin!” Harper shouted happily as he skated to the bench, sticking out his tongue to check for blood.

Harper and the other players said hockey simply made them feel good. It gave them a method and a reason to stave off the natural effects of aging.

And by gliding on skates, they could actually generate some speed.

“If we tried to run, we wouldn’t go anywhere,” Maslow said.

But the players also hinted at something less tangible, some swirl of selfhood and ritualism and sense memory, that week after week lured them back to the ice.

“It’s part of who I am, and that feeling is really powerful,” Meredith said about playing hockey. “Maybe that’s why I hang on, because it harkens back to going to a rink, smelling those smells that you can only find in an indoor ice rink, those hockey smells.”

Schulz was the same way. He ate breakfast and lunch at the rink, which he had built and opened in 1969. Spending most days grinding away at the drawing board, he saw his Tuesday night games as something of a spiritual salve.

“He used to say, ‘It’s the only thing that gives me pleasure,’ ” said Jean Schulz, his widow.

He played until he died, at the age of 77, in 2000. Many players said they would like to do the same.

But if the specter of injury and bodily impermanence hovers over the tournament, the older players’ defuse it with dark humor.

Bob Carolan, 82, a retired pulmonologist from Eugene, Ore., recalled an incident about 15 years ago in which he resuscitated a player on the ice who was having a heart attack.

“The best play I ever made at Snoopy,” said Carolan, who ran into the same man at a tournament 10 years later. “He had an implantable defibrillator, but he was still playing.”

After their early morning game, the Fading Stars came off the ice and stripped away their gear. Out came a case of Coors Light. It was 7:40 a.m. Noticing the beer company’s logo on the team’s sweaters, a visitor asked if it was a sponsor.

“The only sponsorship we’re looking for is Viagra,” said Murray Platt, 68, of Denver.

Also grabbing a cold one was Dave McCay, 72, of Denver, who scored four goals in the team’s opening game, sprained an ankle in the second and arrived for the third in a walking boot.

That leg had given him trouble before — he held up a photo showing 12 screws, a steel rod and a plate in it — and his wife had already begun gently questioning his priorities. But slowing down has not crossed his mind.

“I’m convinced this gives you a better quality of life,” McCay said, leaning on a pair of crutches, “even if you have to limp around a little bit.”

Bernhard Langer was set to play in his final Masters Tournament this week. He first played there in 1982, when he was cut, and he has missed only the 2011 Masters, because of a thumb injury, since he won his first in 1985.

This year’s event was supposed to be a valedictory for a player, who, at 66, had also won the tournament in 1993 and contended in the final round as recently as 2020, when he finished tied for 29th. That put him a stroke ahead of Bryson DeChambeau, the reigning United States Open champion at the time, who consistently out-drove Langer by about 100 yards all week.

Instead, the perennially fit Langer was felled by something that has likely taken down some of his Florida neighbors who aren’t two-time Masters champions: a pickleball injury.

It could have been worse, he said in an interview in March. A neighbor who is a foot and ankle surgeon ran over when he saw Langer drop to the ground and sent Langer for an M.R.I. He had torn his Achilles’ tendon, and the doctor got him into a stabilizing boot so he wouldn’t injure his foot further.

“I started rehab three days after surgery,” he said.

It’s a tough way for a golf great to go down. But the more remarkable feat might be that Langer lasted this long at this level. While aging rockers like the Rolling Stones can just keep replaying their hits, golfers have to continue producing exceptional shots against players a third their age.

He’s done it at the Masters. He’s also done it on the PGA Tour Champions, where players in their early 50s usually dominate when they first play after the PGA Tour. He has won more tournaments on the Champions tour than any other player; he has also set a record for the most senior major titles, at 12.

How has he kept going this long at such a high level?

“I was always into fitness,” he said. “In my younger days I did more cardio stuff and other sports that kept me in good shape. When I moved to America in the 1980s, I got used to going to fitness centers, lifting weight, etc. In my generation, not all of us were great athletes. Many players would spend more time in the bar after a round than on the range or the putting green.”

As he got older his workouts changed and his focus shifted more to maintaining his flexibility and his strength. But that’s not to say he always found them enjoyable: “Workouts are a lot of tedious time,” he said.

In addition to keeping fit, though, Langer said he had continued to work on the mental side of his game. Part of that involves knowing what he can do and what he can’t do.

“I have to play a game Bernhard Langer can play,” he said. “I have to know my strengths and weaknesses. I cannot hit a 1-iron 250 yards in the air and make it stop on a dime. I have to play my game.”

He credits this with letting him stay competitive at the Masters against younger, longer-hitting players, like Tiger Woods.

“They said Tiger was intimidating when he first came out,” Langer said. “I didn’t think he was intimidating as a person. I thought his length was intimidating, but I always played the course. It’s not who you play against. You really play against yourself or the golf course.”

While Langer’s contemporaries marvel at his dedication, some are also right there with him in the fitness trailer.

“Langer is ageless,” said Scott McCarron, 58, another standout among Champions tour players. McCarron was fit in his prime and has since become stronger and more muscled on the over-50 tour. It’s paid off. When he won the Senior Players Championship in 2017, he received an invitation to play in the Players Championship on the PGA Tour.

“The fitness world on the Champions tour has skyrocketed,” he said. “Just about every guy is working out. There are so many more guys working out and stretching than ever before. On the PGA Tour you don’t think about the end. On the Champions tour you know there’s an end. Is it 55 or 58?”

While the Champions tour events have three rounds instead of the four on the PGA Tour, the players are indeed working hard.

“We’re still playing 27 weeks a year, and I’m hitting balls just the same,” McCarron said. “The old thing when you go out and play and drink beers after that, that’s not it anymore.

“At 58, I’m hitting the ball farther than I ever had,” he added. “Some of it is the equipment, but I’m in better shape and swinging the club faster, which isn’t the equipment.”

Some older players like Stewart Cink, Steve Stricker and Padraig Harrington are also hitting the ball as far as they ever did and also occasionally contending on the PGA Tour.

Langer’s dominance of the Champions tour is the result of fitness, competitive grit and an ability to hit shots under pressure again and again. There, though, he was playing against many players much younger than him.

At the Masters, his success also has been knowing the course for 40 years. “In the hundreds of rounds I’ve played there I’ve learned a lot about the course,” he said. “I know where to go and where not to go. I know to miss it here or there. I’ve learned it from others or playing it before. That keeps me from shooting a very high score.”

But, Langer, who will be at the Champions Dinner for past Masters winners this year, added, “Where I used to hit an 8 iron, now I hit a 3 iron [a club that hits the ball lower and farther]. The course is way longer. I’m hitting way longer clubs into every hole. I enjoy the challenge.”

As for next year being his final appearance, Langer wouldn’t say. “I haven’t decided it yet,” he said. “We’ll come to that decision in a little while.”

Will Wade, the men’s college basketball coach recently hired by McNeese State, has been suspended for 10 games next season, bringing to a close a lengthy N.C.A.A. investigation into the football and basketball programs at Louisiana State, the Southeastern Conference powerhouse Wade formerly coached.

A review panel on Thursday ruled that L.S.U. failed to monitor its marquee programs, which were found to have improperly funneled payments to a recruit, paid hush money to keep recruiting violations quiet and allowed the N.F.L. star Odell Beckham Jr., a former L.S.U. wide receiver, to hand out wads of cash to players after the national championship football game in January 2020.

But the independent arbiters did little to add to the school’s self-imposed penalties beyond extending the university’s probation by three years. They also did not cite Wade for the most notorious charge: brazen plans to lure recruits with illicit payments, described by Wade on a federal wiretap, which was first reported by Yahoo and then later broadcast in an HBO documentary.

But because the N.C.A.A. said the federal government rebuffed its attempts to acquire recordings or transcripts, the panel did not have enough credible information to penalize Wade for it, according to Bruce Meyerson, a retired judge who chaired the independent panel.

Another formal complaint dismissed for insufficient evidence was that Wade directed payments from a bank account in his wife’s name to a friend of a recruit’s family, who in exchange would direct the prospect to L.S.U. But Wade successfully argued that because he was not an authorized user of the account that was jointly held by his wife and his mother, he could not compel them to turn the account records over to N.C.A.A. investigators.

The panel also did not find credible evidence of the formal complaint alleging that a former assistant coach, Bill Armstrong, had offered to provide a recruit’s family or associates with $300,000 in cash, as well as providing a job, an apartment and a car for the player’s cousin.

The most serious breach was Wade not informing university officials of an alleged extortion attempt in which a onetime player’s former fiancée threatened to go to the N.C.A.A. with a list of recruiting violations that Wade had committed.

In the end, though, Wade was punished mostly for lies, misleading statements and repeated delays in turning over documents in the investigation.

In addition to the 10-game suspension, Wade is prohibited from off-campus recruiting and has other recruiting restrictions placed on him for two years, but those restrictions may have less impact on a team relying more on the transfer portal to build its roster.

The N.C.A.A. decision brings to an end a drama that began more than four years ago when Yahoo reported on a federal wiretap that had captured Wade saying he’d made “a strong-ass offer” to Javonte Smart, who played at L.S.U. and then briefly in the N.B.A.

Wade was suspended for the 2019 N.C.A.A. tournament after he refused to speak with L.S.U., but reinstated a month later. “You need evidence to ruin somebody’s career,” F. King Alexander, the former L.S.U. president, told The New York Times last year, adding: “Presidents have to follow due process rights. Was he paying players? In my gut, I’d say, yeah, but my gut doesn’t do very well in a jury trial.”

Ultimately, though, Wade was fired just before the 2022 N.C.A.A. tournament, when L.S.U. was given a notice of the allegations by the N.C.A.A.

He was hired one year and one day later at McNeese State, which became the latest school to bring buzz to a lifeless program by hiring a coach who had been swept up in a federal corruption sting. Iona had enlisted Rick Pitino, and Xavier brought in Sean Miller for a second tenure there after his run ended at Arizona. Pitino has since moved on to St. John’s.

The day after McNeese State hired Wade, it announced that he would serve a five-game suspension. There was little disappointment on Thursday from the school, which is tucked away in Lake Charles, La., in the southwestern corner of the state.

The athletic director, Heath Schroyer, did not return a phone message, but he said in a statement that his school, which has not had a winning record in men’s basketball since the 2011-12 season, accepted the decision and was ready to move forward.

“The enthusiasm around this program is at an all-time high,” he said. “And we are all excited about the future of McNeese Basketball with coach leading the way.”

It was the sixth lawsuit against Northwestern University in nine days, and the allegations had become, somehow, both familiar and even more appalling.

A young alumnus of the football program, Simba Short, said he had been restrained and sexually abused in a well-rehearsed hazing ritual. That he had witnessed a teammate struggling to breathe after he was sexually abused while being held underwater. That players had been forced to drink until they vomited, and that coaches could have intervened, but did not.

Short’s experiences troubled him so deeply that he attempted to harm himself and was hospitalized in 2016, according to the complaint he filed in Chicago on Thursday — only the latest to allege a pattern of sexually abusive hazing and racism in the university’s sports program.

This was supposed to have been a banner year for the Big Ten school on the shore of Lake Michigan, with the inauguration of a new president, known as a defender of free speech, and plans to start an $800 million renovation of its football stadium.

Instead, Northwestern has spiraled into an ever-deepening crisis, brought on by the hazing allegations but quickly expanding to touch challenges facing many other elite colleges: how to handle claims of sexual assault; the isolation of Black and Hispanic students within largely white institutions; and the divide between sports culture and a campus’s academic and extracurricular life.

The scandal has prompted the firings of the formerly revered head football coach, Pat Fitzgerald, and of the baseball coach, Jim Foster, who has been accused of abusive coaching practices. It has also raised questions about the leadership of the new president, Michael Schill, and the athletic director, Derrick Gragg, who joined Northwestern in 2021 and hired Foster.

“Things don’t happen in a vacuum. Things occur in a system,” said Hayden Richardson, a former Northwestern cheerleader who claimed in a 2021 lawsuit that coaches forced members of the cheer team to socialize with university donors in a sexualized manner and denied them meals to encourage weight loss.

Now male athletes, too, are telling stories of sexual abuse and racism — and speaking openly of dealing with trauma and suicidal thoughts, and of needing years of therapy to recover.

Abuse Was ‘Normalized’

The alleged abuse has been reported, in lawsuits or through the news media, by members of at least four Northwestern teams who played during the last decade. The university said it first became aware of these issues in November through an anonymous complaint that described hazing in the football program. And on July 8, Schill said an internal investigation had largely supported those claims.

Abuse scandals are nothing new in the Big Ten Conference, which is made up mostly of large public universities from the Midwest to the East Coast that have made athletics big business. Northwestern, which is the only private school in the conference — at least until Southern California joins next year — has by far the smallest undergraduate enrollment, and has viewed itself differently.

But now, Patrick A. Salvi II and Parker Stinar, a lawyer who won a $490 million settlement last year for athletes who were sexually abused by a University of Michigan doctor, have filed four lawsuits on behalf of anonymous athletes at Northwestern.

Short’s lawsuit was filed by Levin & Perconti, a Chicago firm. Another suit was filed by Levin & Perconti and Ben Crump, who has also represented the families of Black victims of police violence, including George Floyd and Tyre Nichols.

All the lawyers have said additional plaintiffs — male and female — may come forward from Northwestern sports like softball, baseball, soccer, field hockey and lacrosse.

At a July 19 news conference, Lloyd Yates, a former Northwestern quarterback, spoke on behalf of several former football players.

“We were thrown into a culture where physical, emotional and sexual abuse were normalized,” Yates said. “Even some of our coaches took part in it.”

Yates, 26, filed a lawsuit on Monday. He played quarterback and receiver at Northwestern from 2015-18, and comes from a family of prominent Black Northwestern alumni. He said the football team’s climate had been especially terrifying for teammates who, without their athletic scholarships, would not have been able to afford a college like Northwestern, and who saw fitting in on the team as “their only ticket to a better life.”

The allegations were first detailed this month by the university’s student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, and were expanded upon in reporting by The Athletic. Former players described hazing rituals, including a practice known as “running,” in which athletes, typically freshmen who had made mistakes on the field, were held down by older players who simulated sexual acts on them while the rest of the team watched. At other times, athletes said, they were force fed Gatorade shakes until they got sick, bullied into playing football while naked and sexually harassed in the shower.

Alumni have said that players who refused to perpetrate hazing rituals would be targeted for future hazing.

Schill, who was inaugurated as president last month, initially announced a two-week suspension for Fitzgerald. But several days later, on July 10, Schill fired him, telling The Daily Northwestern that even though an investigation could not conclude whether Fitzgerald knew of the hazing, it was a leadership failure for it to happen under his watch.

“He owns that culture, and when you own a culture, that means you should take whatever steps are prudent to make sure the culture is a good culture,” Schill told the student newspaper on Monday.

Yates’s complaint states that Matt MacPherson, a coach at the university since 2006, saw players being forced to do pull-ups while naked; Northwestern is now investigating MacPherson, the university said in a written statement on Tuesday.

Fitzgerald, whose eldest son Jack had last year as a high school senior committed to play at Northwestern, indicated in a statement shortly after his firing that he may sue the university, saying Schill “unilaterally revoked our agreement” of a two-week suspension. Fitzgerald’s lawyer did not respond to messages seeking comment. Northwestern did not respond to a request to speak with MacPherson and Gragg, the athletic director.

Some former athletes also detailed alleged incidents of racism, such as Black players being made to change their hairstyles and Latino players being taunted about their relatives cleaning houses.

“This is college sports’ #MeToo moment,” Crump said.

Others are not so sure.

Mike Hankwitz, who spent 13 years as the football team’s defensive coordinator before his retirement after the 2020 season, did not doubt the accounts of some athletes. But in a phone interview, he questioned the scope of the accusations because he said he had neither witnessed nor heard of hazing from coaches, equipment managers, janitors, strength and conditioning coaches, trainers and food servers — all people who would be around Northwestern football players.

“Fitz wanted to do what was right by the players,” Hankwitz said. “Our first team meeting is team rules, one of which is zero tolerance for hazing. To say he sat by as this happened? I’m sorry.”

Hankwitz said Northwestern has long had a players’ council, which was elected by the players and could have brought any concerns to Fitzgerald. “He wanted to give them ownership and leadership skills,” Hankwitz said.

But when Northwestern players sought to unionize in 2014 in a case that was ultimately rejected by the National Labor Relations Board, Fitzgerald framed a unionization vote in personal terms.

“Understand that by voting to have a union, you would be transferring your trust from those you know — me, your coaches and the administrators here — to what you don’t know — a third party who may or may not have the team’s best interests in mind,” Fitzgerald wrote to the team in an email.

Locker Room Culture

Locker rooms have long been the setting for initiation rites that can cross a line into hazing.

Even as most states, including Illinois, have laws banning it, hazing has continued — sometimes under the guise of team-building exercises. An N.C.A.A. survey published in 2016 found that 74 percent of college athletes experienced hazing while in college.

Casey Dailey, a former teammate of Fitzgerald at Northwestern who played briefly in the N.F.L. with the Jets, said he never experienced anything like what the recent players described. With the Jets, the rookies were expected to carry the veterans’ helmets from the practice field and fetch them breakfast on Saturdays, but were never physically abused. What he read about Northwestern shocked him.

“The thing that struck me as odd was the things they were talking about were team destroying, not team building,” said Dailey, who teaches special education near Dallas.

For decades, Northwestern football was the punchline of jokes. Beginning in the 1970s, the team endured 23 consecutive losing seasons — including four in which they went winless. When the program snapped that decades-long skid in 1995 by reaching the Rose Bowl, it felt like the rapture.

The leader of that team was the middle linebacker, a steel-jawed son of an electrical worker from Midlothian, Ill. His name was Pat Fitzgerald.

When Fitzgerald, at age 31, was elevated to head football coach, Northwestern alums could not have been more proud.

The Wildcats have been frequently competitive and occasionally formidable since, with three 10-win seasons and two appearances in the conference championship game. Even as it has succeeded on the field, Northwestern has posted the highest graduation rate among Football Bowl Subdivision schools for the last six years.

Fitzgerald, who was awarded a 10-year contract extension in 2021, was paid $5.3 million by the university in the 2021 fiscal year, according to Northwestern’s most recent federal filing.

Michigan’s attempt to poach Fitzgerald more than a decade ago served as the catalyst for an athletics spending binge. Much of the funding came from the Northwestern mega donor Pat Ryan, the founder of the worldwide insurance firm Aon. His name dots seemingly every other building on campus, from the $270 million Ryan Fieldhouse and Walter Athletics Center to Ryan Field, the football field once known as Dyche Stadium.

Shepherding the projects for years had been the longtime athletic director, Jim Phillips, who left Northwestern in 2021 to become commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

He has been named in at least three lawsuits.

Phillips released a statement last week that read in part: “Hazing is completely unacceptable anywhere, and my heart goes out to anyone who carries the burden of having been mistreated. Any allegation that I ever condoned or tolerated inappropriate conduct against student-athletes is absolutely false.”

An ‘All-American Look’

At least one case emerged under his watch — the complaints by the cheerleaders.

Phillips was leading the athletics department in early 2021 when Hayden Richardson, the former cheerleader, filed her lawsuit, after coming forward with allegations of sexual harassment in 2019.

Also in 2021, a Black member of the cheer team, Erika Carter, told The Daily Northwestern that Black cheerleaders were told to change their hairstyles to achieve an “all-American look” — a similar complaint to those brought by the football alumni who said this month that Black players were targeted by the expectation that their personal appearance project “good, clean American fun.”

The cheerleading coach was fired and Mike Polisky, a longtime administrator, stepped down just 10 days after his appointment as athletic director.

But Richardson, whose lawsuit is pending, said deeper change is needed beyond removing a handful of “harmful actors.”

The similarities between the cheerleaders’ and football players’ accounts have been of particular concern for some faculty members, 263 of whom signed a letter demanding that the new football stadium project be halted “until this crisis is satisfactorily resolved.” They asked for the release of the full internal report on hazing — the university has provided only a two-page summary — and for the athletics department to be subjected to new accountability structures.

Luis A.N. Amaral, an engineering professor, noted that Richardson had said cheerleaders had been sexually harassed in a lounge frequented by university donors and members of the board of trustees.

Any trustees involved in a culture of sexual abuse in the athletics department should be investigated and removed, said Amaral, who signed the letter.

Northwestern declined to answer detailed questions.

“When we receive specific allegations, whether about the football program, other sports or coaches, we will investigate them,” Jon Yates, the university’s vice president for communications, said in a written statement.

On July 18, Schill, the university president, wrote a letter to the faculty promising change. He said the football locker room would be monitored and the university would set up an online reporting tool for complaints. He also promised to hire an outside firm to evaluate the university’s ability to detect threats to athlete well-being and hold bad actors accountable.

Kate Masur, a history professor, said faculty activists are looking for much more. She pointed out that the assistant coaches who worked under Fitzgerald have been allowed to remain in their jobs for the coming football season, which begins at Rutgers on Sept. 3.

The university needs “a root and branch transformation of athletics,” said Masur, who signed the faculty letter.

She also noted the poignancy of these allegations coming to light in the weeks immediately following the Supreme Court’s overturning of affirmative action.

“It shows how difficult the course forward is for many Black and brown students,” she said, “both in getting into a place like Northwestern and staying there in a way that feels healthy.”

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

In Oswaldo Cabrera’s first week in the majors, the Yankees made the most of the multiple gloves that occupy his locker. On any given day, he found he could be sent out at one of four different positions and be expected to hold his own.

That kind of versatility is bound to make a player stand out, as is a No. 95 jersey being worn by a middle infielder for a first-place team with a $250 million payroll. But Cabrera, 23, has upped the ante by injecting some flair into his uniform with an imitation pearl necklace that, thanks to its mix of white and colored beads, clashes just enough with the Yankees’ businesslike approach to make it pop for viewers watching at home.

“I like it,” said reliever Ron Marinaccio, another Yankees rookie who has teamed with Cabrera in the minors and the majors this year. “It’s his thing. That’s what I like about Oswaldo. He’s not really worried about what anybody else is thinking. He’s doing his own thing, and he’s having fun doing it.”

Cabrera, who has instantly found his way into the steady stream of highlight videos on social media thanks to his defensive prowess, received the handmade necklace from Milton Ramos about six weeks ago.

Ramos, an infielder who was a third-round pick of the Mets in 2014, broke his hand on a swing at one of his minor league stops and ended up founding the company PawGripz, which makes rubber batting grips to protect players’ hands. Eventually, he decided that his company ought to sell something stylish, too.

“Look good, play good, you know?” said Ramos, who competed against Cabrera in the minors. “I was like, ‘Hey man, let me send you a necklace,’ because he’s a good friend of mine. He’s never took it off since.”

“Everybody’s loving it,” Cabrera said. “Everybody’s asking me. I’m like: ‘Hey, this is my guy. Ask him!’”

Ramos said his other big league clients include Gary Sánchez, Nick Gordon, Triston McKenzie and Chris Archer. Cabrera wears Ramos’s “Pollyanna Necklace” — so named because it is intended for cheerful and optimistic people — which sells for $29.99.

Cabrera’s, though, is one of a kind. It features two lettered beads that spell “OZ,” a fitting nickname for a player whose defensive wizardry has made him an instant fan favorite.

Standing Out at Every Stop

When Cabrera trotted out to second base on Monday against the Mets, it was only his sixth career game in the majors. Having previously started at shortstop, third base and right field, Cabrera became the first Yankees player to start at four different positions in his first six appearances.

Outfielder Estevan Florial, who was promoted alongside Cabrera last week, said: “It doesn’t matter where he’s playing at. He’s ready all the time.”

At each spot, Cabrera has managed to make a mark.

He reminded people of Derek Jeter with a jump throw in the hole at short. He crashed into Yankee Stadium’s netting and rolled-up tarp while chasing a pop-up at third. He leaped and robbed what might have been a home run in the outfield. He showed off a slick glove flip on an attempted double play. And Tuesday against the Mets he threw out a runner at home from right field.

Of course, no rookie is perfect. Monday’s 4-2 win over the Mets featured some miscommunication on a pop-up. Cabrera ventured way out into the outfield on a pop-up by Pete Alonso as Marwin Gonzalez was charging in from right field. The fielders collided and the ball dropped to the ground. Making matters worse, the next batter, designated hitter Daniel Vogelbach, made the Yankees pay for the error — charged to Cabrera — with a two-run homer.

Still, the Yankees appreciate Cabrera’s tenacity and flexibility, and can put up with a few rookie mistakes along the way.

“He’s fearless. You’ve seen him all over the diamond make some really good plays,” Manager Aaron Boone said. “He’s kind of got that ice water thing. He feels like he belongs.”

Ask Cabrera to pick a favorite position, and he can’t. “I love it all,” he said, noting that each spot was different. The outfield, however, is the newest to him. He had logged just 43 professional innings there entering Tuesday, all of them this year.

Cabrera asked to start playing the outfield in the minors last season, but did not get the opportunity. This year, he didn’t say anything, but the organization took him up on the standing offer. And it was Cabrera’s versatility that helped lead to his promotion to the majors.

“I want to do different things like learn,” Cabrera said. “At the moment that they need me back there, I can play back there. It’s more opportunity to play, so for that reason, I was like, ‘I want to do this, too.’”

Providing a Spark

As valuable as Cabrera’s adaptability is, the Yankees also called him and Florial up last week because they were in search of a spark.

The team was .500 in July and 3-11 in August before Cabrera’s debut. With veterans like Aaron Hicks, Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Josh Donaldson struggling, the Yankees were willing to take a shot on some younger players.

“He’s someone we’re really excited about,” Boone said when Cabrera, the Yankees’ No. 14 prospect, per MLB.com, joined the team. “We’ve always kind of loved his makeup and really like what he brings to the table as a switch-hitter. Impacts the ball and really is a good infielder wherever you put him.”

While Cabrera’s bat hasn’t kept up with his glove so far — he was hitting .136 with a double through Monday, though he drew a bases-loaded walk Tuesday — he has brought some energy and joy to the Bronx at a time when such things have been in short supply (the Yankees won consecutive games on Sunday and Monday for the first time since late July).

“He’s always just been like that free, loose player,” Marinaccio said. “It doesn’t seem like any moment’s too big for him, and it’s pretty impressive to see him just jump right in like this.”

So far, that approach has worked well for the Yankees and Cabrera. But they’re not the only ones benefiting from Cabrera’s rapid rise to notoriety.

“I already have a bunch of people hitting me up,” Ramos said, referring to a rush of necklace orders inspired by Cabrera. “It’s going really good.”