Why Authenticity From Fitzgerald Breath of Fresh Air for MSU
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Michigan State's new head coach wasn't afraid to step on a few toes this week at Big Ten Football Media Days in Chicago.
"I'm just excited to have a home-field advantage," MSU's Pat Fitzgerald said Wednesday, joking about the atmosphere at Northwestern's Ryan Field, which pretty regularly gets taken over by opposing fanbases. "I've never lived that. It's gonna be really cool. Really excited about it, not gonna lie."
Fitzgerald said a lot of the right things while he was back in his hometown of Chicago. Whether it was the "bag of chips" he had on his shoulder entering the season or him simply saying, "I can read," when asked about his Spartans being picked to finish 16th in the Big Ten, it felt like things Michigan State fans had longed for.
Whether Fitzgerald's methods will lead to victories on the field is to be determined. What is already determined, though, is that Michigan State has a coach who cares about the same things as his fanbase, and he's not afraid to say it.
Not Shying Away From Big Goals
MSU's odds of winning a Big Ten championship this season are roughly equivalent to hell freezing over or a "Trouble with the Snap" 2.0 occurring again. ESPN's College Football Power Index gives the Spartans a mere 0.1% chance to win the 18-team conference. If you gave Fitzgerald truth serum and asked him who would win the Big Ten this year, he would probably say Ohio State, Indiana, or Oregon, but he didn't speak like a coach with a 1-in-1,000 chance of hoisting a trophy.
"I think you're going to have 18 head football coaches walk up here and have an expectation to win the Big Ten Championship, and if you don't have that expectation, I don't know why you do it," he said during the televised portion of his availability. "I have no idea why you do it. That's our expectation."
"When I was a student-athlete [at Northwestern], I heard this guy once say we're going to take the purple to Pasadena, and people laughed at him, and we're going to take the green back to being Big Ten champions."
I didn't take it as a Babe Ruth "call our shot" moment, but rather a "this is our goal, and I'm making that clear" moment. He won two Big Ten titles at Northwestern, of all places, as a player. Fitzgerald didn't get one as a coach there, but he got to the title game twice, and now he's at a place that won the conference three times during his 17 years in charge of the Wildcats.
"Our football program should be winning," Fitzgerald also said Wednesday. "We should be winning championships. We have every resource. We have not a good fanbase; we have one of the best fanbases in all of sport."
It's still to be determined whether Fitzgerald's methods will lead to winning again in East Lansing. Alas, there is still some value in a coach simply stating his goals, especially when the odds are stacked against it.
There's also that rivalry to contend with.
Rivalry vs. Michigan
Fitzgerald has also made it clear that extra emphasis is to be placed on the annual game against Michigan. He said the Wolverines were the opponent he looked forward to beating the most in a clip with CBS Sports this week. This is where he definitely differs from Jonathan Smith, who seemed to get that the game meant more than others last year, but in a more "I've-gotta-say-this" kind of way, rather than a more authentic version.
"The best part of the Big Ten is the rivalries. I understand our rivalry [with Michigan]," Fitzgerald said. "Every game's important, but that game will just always mean more."
Fitzgerald said the things that mattered. He wasn't brutally honest, but he didn't overly sugarcoat or give the supreme PR-trained answer. Just saying "we should be winning championships" and "that game will just always mean more" is all people need.
It feels more like a blue-collar "Michigan State" team. There's a blue-collar attitude and a greater willingness to put the chips on the table. Beating Michigan on a relatively regular basis and being in contention for Big Ten titles and/or CFP berths is a perfectly reasonable expectation for the long-term future of MSU football. Fitzgerald has a lot of work to do to get the Spartans to that point, but he's not afraid to aim as high as possible.
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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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