CHICAGO – He gets it. All of it. That’s a start. Not to mention an improvement on the vibe front, which still matters in college football.
It’s one thing to lose to your rival. It’s another to admit you didn’t know how important the rivalry is, like former MSU coach Jonathan Smith did. That won’t happen with Pat Fitzgerald.
And even if he doesn’t completely understand it just yet – the nuance, the politics, the history and the stereotypes that make up the stories that matter to Michigan and Michigan State when its football teams take the field – Fitzgerald would never admit it.
He’s too savvy for that. He knows, intuitively, it seems, that saying the right things will matter when the losses come, and they will; this isn’t Indiana.
And so, here was Fitzgerald in the Hilton on Michigan Ave. Wednesday, July 29, effortlessly holding court at the Big Ten Media Days.
First on the big stage for the cameras, where he joked that he’d answer questions on behalf of P.J. Fleck, the loquacious Minnesota coach who’d just filibustered most of his 15-minute Q&A.
Second on the smaller stage, the more intimate breakout setting where the reporters leaned in close and the new MSU football coach dropped a couple of swear words. He talked about building relationships over beers, and mused about what a salary cap might look like.
Actually, he didn’t muse as much as throw that questioner an incredulous look, as in: College football would obviously be more equitable with a salary cap. Look at the NFL. Then look at Major League Baseball. Duh!
Maybe he didn’t say all that with his face, but he came close. That’s because he understands the mission, which is partly why he was hired at MSU, and that is partly why the crowd of reporters was two and three deep around his breakout session, the kind of crowd usually drawn to Ohio State’s coach, or Michigan’s coach or now Indiana’s coach.
Even Mark Dantonio didn’t draw such throngs, despite that historic stretch of winning. Mostly because – aside from a few memorable moments – Dantonio generally said very little, and he said it laconically.
His swag was less obvious, though if you watched him saunter onto a practice field when he had the Spartans rolling, the appeal was crystal. Fitzgerald is more traditionally charismatic and tries his best to answer each question with a side of his personal history.
He doesn’t quite open a vein like Tom Izzo, turning media scrums into therapy sessions, but he clearly has a gift for relating.
That matters. Not as much as winning, obviously, but when a couple of coaches are losing and all else is equal, a fan base is much more likely to find patience, even tolerance, for the one who knows how to connect with the audience.
Of course ridiculous stuff matters. It’s college football
So yeah, you’re darn right Fitzgerald said “I understand our rivalry” and that he said the rivalry game was 137 days away or something close to it. Did he know exactly? Did he or someone look that up? Who knows. What he did know for certain was that even a scintilla of research in this space would play well.
Also, he didn’t mention the rival by name. Silly? I mean … no, not in the proper context.
Fitzgerald’s predecessor didn’t just lose his job because he couldn’t beat Michigan; he lost it because of how he sounded after losing to the Wolverines.
But also, because of how his team looked. Fitzgerald is aware of that, too, and as much as he didn’t want to throw anyone under the bus, he had no choice in order to make his pitch, and his point:
“We’re going to get back to playing tough, hard-nosed Spartan football that’s going to make our fan base and Spartan Nation proud.”
How proud? Well, he wasn’t shy about that either.
“Expectations are to win the Big Ten championship, full stop,” he said. “And if a head coach walks up here and doesn’t say that, then I’d want to check their pulse.”
Right now, in the absence of games and anything on the field to judge, pulse and tone and vibes are what fill the void. His record will determine how long he gets to stay in East Lansing, and that record will ultimately be determined by his ability to recruit – both high schoolers and collegians – develop, and keep his players.
Much has changed since Northwestern fired him in the summer of 2023. NIL money shapes rosters. The transfer portal is the conduit. These were taking shape during Fitzgerald’s last couple of seasons, but as he said Wednesday, a coach must think about roster building in a different way and can no longer do it alone. Colleges have general managers to guide this process.
As for scheme? Fitzgerald intends to build line-of-scrimmage teams and go from there.
Whether he can depends on recruiting, development and resources. He’ll have a different level of the latter at MSU, at least more than he did at Northwestern. He’ll also have a real home crowd.
How long that crowd stays with him is up to him. He got off to a good start last winter when he was introduced, and he showed even more of that deft touch here in Chicago. The public-facing part of these jobs still matter, especially when a coach is asked to rebuild and restore.
Fitzgerald may have some things to learn about the green and white, and he’s got a lot to prove that he can do this once again, but he understands the Big Ten and the Midwest, and he understands how to relate.
Like keeping his opening statement short so he could get to reporter’s questions. And, by saying things like this:
“I wouldn’t say I have a chip on my shoulder. I wouldn’t say our program has a chip on our shoulder. I’d say we have a bag of chips on our shoulder. I’ll leave it at that.”
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MSU’s Pat Fitzgerald is winning the offseason. Now comes the hard part
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
