EXCLUSIVE: Palumbo Expected To Take Over as Michigan State Interim AD
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Michigan State is going through yet another change in leadership.
MSU athletic director J Batt is finalizing a deal with Kentucky for the same position, a source told Michigan State On SI on Saturday. Batt is departing his role in East Lansing after just one year, and he's putting the Spartans in a very precarious spot.
Open Spots at President, AD
The two most important roles pertaining to Michigan State athletics are now vacant. University president Kevin Guskiewicz is set to leave the school for Clemson as well. His departure, announced on May 27, is a major reason Batt's move to Kentucky became plausible.
That's because Batt had a clause in his contract that cut his buyout in half in the event that Guskiewicz was no longer the president at MSU. The price tag, which will presumably be paid for by Kentucky, dropped from $5 million to $2.5 million.
Interim Plans
No president probably means that there will be no permanent AD for a while. In the interim, a source has indicated that Jon Palumbo is the favorite to take over Batt's duties. Palumbo going to Lexington too is easy to imagine, though. Palumbo followed Batt to Michigan State from Georgia Tech and has been operating under the title of Executive Deputy Athletics Director and Chief Operating Officer.
Palumbo as MSU's interim AD is not finalized, but is expected. However, Palumbo is not expected to be considered for the permanent AD role once that process begins.
Palumbo seems like a logical choice. Not having a permanent president makes it nearly impossible to find a permanent athletic director. MSU hasn't even named an interim president to take over for Guskiewicz. It will almost certainly be an extended period of time before a new permanent president emerges.
That means someone has to be willing to operate under the interim tag for that extended period. Palumbo can benefit a lot from that as somebody who hasn't been a high-major athletic director before.
He was once the athletic director at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi for four years from 2018-22, too. It was there that he hired Steve Lutz as men's basketball coach. Lutz made the NCAA Tournament both years he was there and is now at Oklahoma State.
Being in charge of a Division I athletic department (and doing it well) isn't a foreign concept for him. TAMU-CC doesn't exactly operate at the scale of Michigan State, but it's tough to see the Spartans doing better right now.
No matter how one slices it, though, losing both Guskiewicz and Batt is disastrous for MSU. Just seven months ago, "alignment" was being preached during Pat Fitzgerald's introductory press conference. There is anything but that now.
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A 2025 graduate from Michigan State University, Cotsonika brings a wealth of experience covering the Spartans from Rivals and On3 to his role as Michigan State Spartans Beat Writer on SI. At Michigan State, he was also a member of the world-renowned Spartan marching band for two seasons.
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