MSU's Fitzgerald Details First-Ever Practice as Spartan HC

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Winter workouts are done, and it's now time to finally hit the field.

Roughly six o'clock on Tuesday morning marked the beginning of spring practice for Michigan State football. The number of new faces may be too many to count, but the biggest one is new head coach Pat Fitzgerald.

Fitz's First Practice

Michigan State's Pat Fitzgerald speaks after his team's first spring football practice at the Skandalaris Football Center on Tuesday, March 17, 2026. | Jacob Cotsonika, Michigan State Spartans on SI

While driving to his first official practice as the Spartans' head coach, Fitzgerald --- a proud "Chicago Irishman" --- said he passed by lines of students who were already out celebrating St. Patrick's Day at 4:50 a.m. and that he thought about stopping and getting out to say hello to them.

"Be safe, be smart," was the advice Fitzgerald offered before diving into football. "Lot of fun to see them, and just great to be out on the field with the guys. I've been working, obviously, diligently since day one when I got here to get to this point, and today was a great first step. I've got pages of notes on ways that we've got to get a lot better, but that's to be expected."

Michigan State Spartans head coach Pat Fitzgerald addresses fans during a men's basketball game against the Iowa Hawkeyes on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, at the Breslin Center. Fitzgerald had been formally introduced earlier that day. | Starr Portice, Michigan State Spartans on SI

The early start time is not some message sent to the team by forcing a bunch of college kids to wake up before sunrise again. It is a weekday, after all, so some players have classes going on, and Fitzgerald said the chosen time was to "maximize the window of practice."

One of the main things that Fitzgerald wants to set in place is, basically, practicing and learning how to practice. Day one, especially with so many new players and coaches truly coming together for the first time, has to be a tone-setter.

Dec 2, 2025; East Lansing, Michigan, USA; Michigan State head football coach Pat Fitzgerald watches the Spartans defeat the Iowa Hawkeyes at Jack Breslin Student Events Center. | Dale Young-Imagn Images

"We've, obviously, got a lot of different things we need to get done schematically in all three phases," Fitzgerald said. "So, we'll put that over here; that has to be done. But how we practice, fundamentally, how we want to attack whatever concept we're doing in all three phases, and then, obviously, the communication standpoint, and eventually here, as we move forward, it'll be the fundamentals of physicality and taking the mental toughness that we've been trying to develop and turn it into physical toughness."

Michigan State also posted a video on social media on Monday where the marching band came in and played the fight song for the players (that was at 7 a.m. that day, too). Fitzgerald likened the strategy there to something New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel does.

what are we going to do?

SING OUR FIGHT SONG 🎶🔊 pic.twitter.com/7YGJbRVjkQ
— Michigan State Football (@MSU_Football) March 16, 2026

"I saw or read somewhere, the first play they installed was taking a knee to win the game," he said. "So I wanted the first play I installed with the team to be singing the fight song. I want everything we do to be about the end in mind. It's a process to get there, but you earn the privilege to sing the fight song with the band and the students."

This is still just practice No. 1 out of 15, though. Fitzgerald seemed relatively pleased with what he saw, but he also said that "nobody dreams of day two."