Funding Pat Fitzgerald's MSU football program priority for Spartans AD

Dan Bartholomae provided the type of homecoming week message Michigan State football fans wanted to hear.

Pat Fitzgerald, too.

The Spartans’ new athletic director – in a letter sent to alums, students and donors this week – said he intends to get his inherited first-year football coach more money for his program.

Even in the midst of a three-game losing streak. Even with Bartholomae not even two months into his new job. Even after MSU received a $10 million donation from Joe and Julie Serra a week earlier that will help with the massive undertaking of upgrading Spartan Stadium.

“Football must be resourced to be competitive immediately,” Bartholmae wrote, “and they will be.”

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Five games and two athletic directors into his MSU career, Fitzgerald appears to have found a staunch ally in Bartholomae, who after the loss at Notre Dame on Sept. 19 stood inside the media room and confidently declared to a reporter that he felt the Spartans have a strong football coach for the future. And the letter Bartholomae sent on Wednesday, Oct. 7, reaffirmed those private sentiments publicly.

And it started the stopwatch that went on pause this summer with the departure of the AD who hired Fitzgerald, J Batt.

As President Kevin Guskiewicz wavered toward leaving MSU, Kentucky swooped in and hired away Batt on June 15. A little more than a month later, at Big Ten media day in Chicago, Fitzgerald talked to reporters about his program being left in limbo before even playing a game as he tried to figure out the new financial landscape of college sports, calling it “a little pause there.”

“Where it needs to go, those are conversations for when we get our next AD on board,” he said July 29. “And I’ve got to live it for a year, honestly.”

Guskiewicz ultimately remained at MSU after accepting and then reneging on the presidency at Clemson. On Aug. 17, he hired Bartholomae away from Western Michigan. The two Pittsburgh-area natives have blue-collar backgrounds similar to that of the Chicago-raised Fitzgerald, Cheboygan native hockey coach Adam Nightingale and Upper Peninsula icon Tom Izzo, something the Hall of Fame MSU basketball coach trumpeted Thursday at Big Ten basketball media day in Rosemont, Illinois.

“I think that it’s hard to say, especially for some of us that have been there so long, that this time, we got it right. Because we have been through a hell of a 10 years with too many missing parts and too many people leaving and all that stuff,” Izzo said. “But I do think this group is gonna hang tight. I think Dan is gonna be here for the long run, Fitz and Adam.

“I’ll be here, though, until I die or something.”

Izzo’s program is preparing to chase his second national championship in his 32nd season, the first in 2000. Nightingale has resurrected MSU’s proud hockey tradition and been among the nation’s elite the last few years, winning the last three Big Ten regular-season titles but falling short of reaching a Frozen Four for the first time since winning it all in 2007. Both have established revenue sharing rhythms and funding over the past five years since the 2021 Supreme Court ruling allowing athletes to receive name, image and likeness payments.

Fitzgerald, meantime, arrives at the midpoint of his first season against Illinois on Saturday (3:30 p.m., FS1) having endured a significant number of injuries to his depth chart's already-thin top layer, with running back transfer Cam Edwards out for the season and linebacker Jordan Hall having already missed two games with two separate injuries. Beyond the absences of the primary playmakers on both sides of the ball, the Spartans have been battered and bruised over the past three weeks by No. 3 Notre Dame, Nebraska and Wisconsin – three teams with a combined 14-1 record.

“That’s just kind of how life works. It’s trials, it’s tribulations,” Fitzgerald said on his weekly radio show Wednesday night. “It’s just kind of Relationship 101. And this is our first year as a staff going through it with the guys and learning a lot of new personalities. This is going to be ongoing through this whole year. It’ll reset in January – hopefully with not 62 new guys and a whole new staff. And a whole new support staff. … Everybody will have lived it.

“And it’s not an excuse for our performance currently. It’s just the storm we’re in. You know what? You can have the storm impact you or you can be the storm. We’re somewhere in the middle right now.”

That physical toll has fueled an inability to generate big gains and prevent sacks on offense and a failure to stop explosive plays on defense. But a day after talking “his favorite sport” with NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football” show, Izzo was immediately asked about the oblong ball and Fitzgerald during his media day availibility.

And he delivered a full-throated endorsement.

“I don’t need to be Pat’s PR guy, but I love Pat,” Izzo said Thursday. “I mean, there’s fits for places. I think I was a fit for East Lansing myself. And I think we’ve had some good coaches – some have made it, some haven’t. But some fit the place. And he fits the place. He’s got energy galore. He’s a tough blue-collar guy, and that’s what he wants to be and that’s what he is.

“I think you’re gonna see Pat Fitzgerald – you know, we’ve struggled a little bit lately – but he’s gonna get it done there. I have no ifs, ands or buts about that. And being the big football fan I am, I hope he gets it.”

To get it done, Fitzgerald and Bartholomae also must get it right with funding after five years of stops and starts in the NIL sphere. MSU is on its fourth athletic director and fourth football coach since Mark Hollis resigned in 2018 and Mark Dantonio retired in 2020.

All of them pledged but failed to bridge the gap from the Spartans’ success under Dantonio in the 2010s into the new era of college sports with promises of elite recruits, new revenue streams and increased donations from boosters and sponsors.

“Providing those resources as we build towards the future is my primary focus every day,” Bartholomae wrote. “This includes resources for roster development AND other football priorities such as Spartan Stadium renovations. We can’t just pick one – they both must be addressed.

“Prioritizing football success still allows the department to resource and support other programs. Comprehensive investment in football will ultimately benefit everyone invested in MSU Athletics. Clear, well-placed priorities create additional opportunities for department-wide success.”

Along with his praise for Fitzgerald, Izzo also gave a hearty endorsement for the hardy Bartholomae.

“I think Dan’s been good. I think it’s another fit,” Izzo said. “I mean, when you say that, right when you say that, you’re insulting somebody else, and I’m not insulting anybody else. But I think right now, we’ve got guys that, I keep using the word blue-collar, because that’s what I think we are – lunch-bucket guys. Myself, Adam our hockey coach, who is unbelievable.

“I really love what Fitz is doing. And I think Dan brings to the table, he’s got energy, he’s built it at a smaller level.”

The challenge to chart a course for the next five years for Fitzgerald and Bartholomae is much bigger now than it was anywhere else they have been before.

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Funding Pat Fitzgerald's MSU football program priority for Spartans AD