East Lansing — Michigan State needed a new leader for its athletic department. It didn’t have to look far to find its new athletic director.
Michigan State is hiring Western Michigan’s Dan Bartholomae to be its next athletic director, a source close to the situation told The Detroit News on Monday.
Bartholomae, a 46-year-old Pittsburgh native, has been athletic director at Western Michigan since January 2022. His new contract details at Michigan State are unknown, though at Western Michigan he made at least $750,000 in compensation last year.
Hiring Bartholomae comes with a hefty price tag for Michigan State. An August 2025 contract signed by Bartholomae and Western Michigan carries a buyout of $5.1 million. Some of that will be offset by a $3.95 million buyout Michigan State negotiated with Kentucky, who hired predecessor J Batt in June.
Bartholomae previously worked as an athletic administrator at Oregon State from 2017 to 2022 and the University of Pittsburgh, in his hometown, from 2002 to 2017. He holds an MBA from Pitt and a Bachelor of Science in policy analysis and public affairs from Indiana.
In June 2025, Michigan State hired former athletic director J Batt on a six-year, $12.6 million contract in addition to a buyout of more than $2 million paid to Georgia Tech. His tenure lasted all of one year before he took the same job at the University of Kentucky on June 15 for contract terms that will pay him nearly $3 million per year. His exit came amid uncertainty surrounding president Kevin Guskiewicz, who accepted and then later reneged on the presidency at Clemson University.
Though Guskiewicz is staying put in East Lansing, Batt’s departure for Kentucky came July 28 — after a 43 day wait to see if Guskiewicz’s departure would trigger a contract clause that cut his early-departure buyout in half. That left Michigan State needing to hire a new AD in consecutive summers, after other programs like Kentucky, Wisconsin and Virginia Tech had long conducted searches..
In Bartholomae, Michigan State found a leader it plans to keep awhile. He comes to Michigan State with a strong reputation at Western Michigan, where his hockey program’s 2025 national championship and football program’s 2025 MAC champion, 10-win season proved to be two of his biggest successes. Under his direction, Western Michigan is also building a $515 million arena in downtown Kalamazoo for hockey and basketball. His department raised $21.8 million that year while increasing its revenues and lowering its usage of general funds. In non-revenue sports, its women’s soccer program won the MAC back-to-back seasons.
Bartholomae interviewed for the Michigan State job last summer, when the job went to Batt, whose connections to President Kevin Guskiewicz date back 25 years. A little over a year later, it’s Bartholomae taking the job after another search.
TurnkeyZRG handled part of the search for Michigan State, the same firm that found Batt and former football coach Jonathan Smith. However, Michigan State also utilized a traditional search committee that was more involved in the selection.
Turning the page at MSU
Bartholomae’s hiring closes the book on a turbulent summer for Michigan State. On May 27, President Kevin Guskiewicz announced he had accepted the same role at Clemson amid a rift with members of the Board of Trustees. That rift centered around transparency with new MSU athletics fundraising arm Spartan Ventures, particularly trustees’ concerns over an NDA carrying a $250,000 penalty they must sign in order to view Spartan Ventures documents. Even amid all that drama, Spartan Ventures launched July 1, as previously planned.
By July 7, Guskiewicz announced his decision to stay at Michigan State after basketball coach Tom Izzo and other campus leaders wooed him to stay. But in between those decisions, Batt took the job as athletic director of Kentucky on June 15. He didn’t depart for Lexington until July 28, holding out for Guskiewicz’s departure which would have saved his new employer half of his $5 million buyout due to an escape clause. Kentucky and Michigan State negotiated the full buyout to $3.95 million, which incidentally covered Batt’s more than $2 million buyout at Georgia Tech plus his $1.85 million salary for his first year on the job.
Jon Palumbo, the active CEO of Spartan Ventures, took over as the interim AD in Batt’s absence. He was Batt’s right-hand man at Georgia Tech and followed him to East Lansing last summer. Michigan State also explored him as a candidate but wound up going with a new face in Bartholomae.
Bartholomae’s hiring puts a stop to some of the drama around Michigan State’s athletic department. It now has a president, an athletic director and a football coach in place, and Izzo is still at Breslin Center preparing a basketball team that should be a Final Four contender. Considering what the summer looked like at times for the Spartans, this is quite a positive outcome.
Bartholomae picks up MSU baton at key juncture
Despite only being Michigan State’s athletic director for one year, Batt got a whole lot done in that span. He formed Spartan Ventures to maximize revenue streams, launched a $1 billion fundraising campaign called FOR SPARTA, and planned $500 million in renovations to Spartan Stadium. He fired Jonathan Smith — who Oregon State hired when Bartholomae was on its search committee — and replaced him with Pat Fitzgerald. On his way out the door, Batt negotiated a 10-year, $40 million deal with MSUFCU in exchange for jersey patches on all varsity uniforms.
Bartholomae is jumping on a train in motion, though as its new conductor it’s his own hand that can pull the brakes or shovel more coal into the furnace.
How Bartholomae approached the job in Kalamazoo gives good insight into how he might approach the job at Michigan State. He tends to give his coaches a long leash to prove their abilities and merits, and he knows how to retain talent once proven. He gave hockey coach Pat Ferschweiler a contract that has stood up to NHL interest in multiple offseasons, all while outfitting the 2025 national champions with resources to remain an NCAA contender.
“To be successful, you need the resources and support and belief from your administration,” Ferschweiler said after his Broncos’ 2025 national championship, soaked in water from the celebration. “I’ve talked open and honestly at all times, Dan Bartholomae is a superstar athletic director.”
Ferschweiler is a friend of Michigan State hockey coach Adam Nightingale. They were both assistant coaches with the Detroit Red Wings.
In football, Bartholomae made a coaching change after his first year on the job in 2022 and tabbed an up-and-comer in Lance Taylor, who got his start coaching as a GA for Nick Saban at Alabama in 2007. Taylor owns a 20-19 record, 15–9 in the MAC, and led the Broncos to the 2025 MAC championship this past season at 10-4, including a win over Kennesaw State in the Myrtle Beach Bowl this past season.
Bartholomae also cultivated donor relations, particularly with medical tech company Stryker and furniture company Stafford-Smith. Just this month, Western Michigan football unveiled a brand new weight room sponsored by the latter.
Even if winning in the MAC differs from the money market of the Big Ten — where Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon, Michigan and Southern Cal are among the big spenders — under Bartholomae Western Michigan football positioned itself for success, and Bartholomae had a part in that standard through his investment in a program that — even in down years — funds the bulk of the athletic department. He’s someone who knows that football needs to win, and how to make that happen.
For new MSU football coach Pat Fitzgerald, building Michigan State back into a contender will require a lot of resources — a lot of money, in the revenue share and NIL era. The 17-year Northwestern coach said at Big Ten Media Days that while he’s been through a lot of AD changes in his career, the importance of keeping Guskiewicz as president can’t be overstated.
“Keeping Kevin was essential for the football program,” Fitzgerald said.
And though Tom Izzo is still going strong at 71 years old, the real figurehead of Michigan State isn’t going to coach for eternity. Michigan State’s athletic administrators have to plan for the possibility of hiring Izzo’s successor some day, and with that needing to maintain a program that has proven the pulse at Michigan State through football’s highs and lows. They say that nobody wants to follow the legend. How about hiring the guy to follow the legend?
Bartholomae hired off the Izzo tree in April 2022 when he picked up DJ Stephens as head coach. Stephens never had a winning season, never made the NCAA Tournament and topped out at 12-20, 9-9 in the MAC. He was fired this past offseason, and Western Michigan hired Kahil Fennell as his replacement.
cearegood@detroitnews.com
@ConnorEaregood
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Michigan State hiring Dan Bartholomae as new athletic director
Reporting by Connor Earegood, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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By Connor Earegood, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
