MSU’s New AD Vows Football Will Get the Money
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Michigan State NIL and roster spending on football runs between $21 million and $25 million, according to The Athletic. That lands the Spartans in the lower half of the Big Ten, ahead of just five conference programs. The Northwestern Wildcats and the Washington Huskies sit in the same range.
New athletic director Dan Bartholomae says that is going to change. In a letter to the Michigan State fanbase on Wednesday, Bartholomae wrote that any program the school expects to compete for championships has to be funded “in the top 1/3 of the conference,” and he named football first. The Spartans are 2-3 under first-year head coach Pat Fitzgerald and host Illinois on Saturday.
Bartholomae Vows Football Will Be Resourced to Win Now
The letter landed ahead of homecoming weekend and laid out the three principles Bartholomae says he will run the athletic department on: transparency, consistency and competitiveness. Football is the first test of the third one.
Coach Fitzgerald and our football program are priorities that align with all three. Football must be resourced to be competitive immediately, and they will be. Providing those resources as we build towards the future is my primary focus every day. 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. It’s paramount to creating the culture we desire – one where every student-athlete and every program feels valued. We should aspire to win multiple national championships. It’s a fact that affinity, giving and support increase departmentally and in all areas when our programs win at the highest level. I’ve witnessed this firsthand at previous stops. That’s our challenge and our focus.
The stadium half of that is not an aside. Bartholomae put roster spending and Spartan Stadium renovations in the same sentence and refused to choose between them, so the football money he is promising has to stretch across both.
Once the money arrives, the question is what it buys in recruiting and in the transfer portal.
Where Michigan State NIL Spending Ranks in the Big Ten
The Rutgers Scarlet Knights are at $20 million to $23 million in NIL money, the Illinois Fighting Illini at $19 million to $23 million, and the Iowa Hawkeyes at $17 million to $21 million. Iowa has been one of the more consistent programs in the conference without much of it, which is the argument against treating the budget as the whole story.
Michigan State wants to be one of the best programs in the country, and the distance between its budget and the top of its own league is the clearest measure of how far away that is.
Ohio State and Oregon Set the Big Ten Ceiling
The Ohio State Buckeyes carry the conference’s top NIL budget at $49 million to $54 million, and the Oregon Ducks are right behind at $48 million to $54 million. That is roughly double what Michigan State has to work with.
Bartholomae’s top-third target would not close that gap. It would put the Spartans in a different conversation than the one they are in now.
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