MSU's Pat Fitzgerald Shares Vision for Spartans Culture
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The official leaders of the team aren't necessarily supposed to do all the leading.
New Michigan State head football coach Pat Fitzgerald knows that. Obviously, everything falls to him as the head coach. Part of that responsibility is setting up a culture where the players step up and lead, too.
What Fitzgerald Said
"The best teams I've ever played on, coached, head coach, whatever, if it's player-run, player-run, it's going to be unbelievable," Fitzgerald said in an interview with WLNS released past Thursday. "If it's ended up coach-run, coach-led, we'll never achieve our goals."
Getting to that point will be a bit of a process. There are a lot of players and coaches inside the Skandalaris Football Center that didn't have familiarity with the building a few months ago. MSU ended up taking 30 new players from the transfer portal, largely out of necessity, as well as bringing in 29 players in its 2026 recruiting class.
The role of the players who stayed will be important. Two names that are probably the most important are linebacker Jordan Hall and quarterback Alessio Milivojevic. Hall was practically the team's spokesperson to the media during the Spartans' 4-8 season in 2025, often having to answer some difficult questions. Milivojevic, simply put, is the team's starting quarterback now; being a leader is what comes with the job.
"I hope as we move forward over time, it ends up being the leadership comes from the locker room out, not from the coaching staff in," Fitzgerald said. "That's always been the design that I've had. It takes a little bit of time educating the guys on what we want and then how we want it done, and we're in that right now. We'll go through that probably all the way through training camp, frankly."
The early indications have been positive. Fitzgerald has indicated that Milivojevic has had a particularly active role in the early days of his tenure, saying that his QB1 was at nearly every dinner he'd host with transfer portal recruits.
Hall and other players have also been at these dinners, according to Fitzgerald, but Milivojevic was the most frequent attendee.
Fitzgerald has also not been shy at comparing what he wants from his players to what Mark Dantonio wanted from his players: toughness, physicality, and a blue-collar physicality. It's also not just hot air, since Fitzgerald's Northwestern teams had some similar values.
"When you came into Spartan Stadium, your nose was crooked by the time you walked out, and there was just a physicality and a toughness that we've just got to get back to being our backbone and DNA," Fitzgerald said.
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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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