CHICAGO — Pat Fitzgerald had some new experiences the last three football seasons. He was a volunteer coach at Loyola Academy, where his sons played. He made trips to Iowa, where Ryan Fitzgerald is a backup quarterback for the Hawkeyes, mingling with other team parents at home games.
“This tailgating thing is awesome,” Fitzgerald said after exploring the other side of a college football weekend for the first time in his life.
It is not, however, as awesome as being in the thick of the fight on an autumn Saturday. Not as awesome as leading a team onto the field after immersing mind, body and soul into the preparation of a game plan. Not as awesome as the visceral thrill or pain of winning and losing, when it all starts with you.
Those were the things Fitzgerald longed for after being dismissed at Northwestern in the summer of 2023 in the wake of hazing allegations within the Wildcats’ program. While investigations found “highly inappropriate conduct within the football program,” it was determined that Fitzgerald did not condone or direct any of the hazing. He and the school settled a wrongful termination suit filed by Fitzgerald last August, paving the way for his return to a sport where he was both a star player and a successful coach at Northwestern.
Someone was going to hire Fitz as the coaching carousel spun last year. Michigan State won out.
“I didn’t walk [to East Lansing],” he said. “I sprinted.”
Thus the insatiable competitor is back, in a place that feels like a perfect fit—gritty person, gritty program, both trying to make a comeback. There is no hungrier coach in college football in 2026 than Pat Fitzgerald.
As much as the 51-year-old enjoyed the family time of the last three years, this is where he belongs. Put a play sheet in his hands on the sideline, not a beer in an Iowa City parking lot.
“I missed the competition,” Fitzgerald said Wednesday at Big Ten media days. “I missed the camaraderie. I missed the brotherhood. I missed winning.
“I expect to win every game and when we don’t, I’m pissed. I’m pissed at myself first and then get over it and find a solution to move forward, be better the next week. So I just love winning and I love being around winners. And that’s why I’m so grateful to be at State.”
The winningest coach in the history of college football’s losingest program is now at a place that should have a shot at Big Ten and College Football Playoff contention when things are operating well. Lately, things have not operated well.
Michigan State is coming off four straight losing seasons, its longest such stretch of futility since 1980–83. The Mel Tucker era was briefly successful before devolving into a flaming disaster. The Jonathan Smith hire proved to be such a bad fit that he lasted only two seasons. It’s hard to remember that the Spartans were College Football Playoff participants in 2015 and recorded double-digit victories seven times between 2010–21.
“Our football program should be winning,” Fitzgerald said. “We should be winning championships. We have every resource. We have not a good fan base; we have one of the best fan bases in all of sport.
“Expectations are to win the Big Ten championship. Full stop.”
Fitz got Northwestern into the Big Ten title game twice, in 2018 and ’20. In a macro sense, that’s almost as remarkable an achievement as the 1995 Wildcats winning the league and advancing to the Rose Bowl, when Fitzgerald was a star linebacker under Gary Barnett. Because the school is not easily wired for football greatness.
But in a micro sense, Fitz and Northwestern also benefited from playing in the slogtastic Big Ten West, also known as the Land Modern Offense Forgot. The West Division was so outgunned by the East that its champion went 0–10 in the league title game.
HIs last two Northwestern teams cratered in offensive dysfunction, going a combined 4–20 while flailing offensively. His tenure in Evanston ended on an 11-game losing streak. Even before the hazing allegations erupted, it was probably time for both coach and school to make a change.
Fitzgerald’s Northwestern teams won in the margins, finding ways to compensate for talent gaps. His six best Wildcats teams, which either won nine or more games or won the Big Ten West, were a combined 25–6 in one-score games. They were more resourceful and tenacious than overpowering.
In that sense, Fitz is the spiritual heir to the last great Michigan State coach, Mark Dantonio. The two were competitors over the course of many years, but now Fitz is trying to rebuild in his old rival’s fiercely combative image.
“I’m a Big Ten guy,” Fitzgerald said. “I think there’s certain places that I fit and Michigan State was on that short list. Coach D is a modern model of what our program should look like. When I was playing and then coaching against Mark’s teams, there was no doubt who the toughest team in the Big Ten was, and that was Michigan State. And we’ve let that slip through our fingers and now we’ve got to go snatch it back.”
The Big Ten winning three straight national titles by three different programs, overlapping with the implosion in East Lansing and Fitzgerald’s exile from college coaching, has created some serious FOMO. There is a renewed urgency for the Spartans that began the minute they were introduced to their new coach.
“You could hear the excitement in his voice,” said linebacker Jordan Hall, the Spartans’ leading tackler. “You could just tell that he knows and he’s under the understanding that this is a place where we can win because we’ve won here before. We talk about us as players being hungry, but he was cold a little bit, too, and out of coaching.”
Pat Fitzgerald is back in it now, with a burning desire to prove he can still do it. Michigan State can match his desire.
“I wouldn’t say I have a chip on my shoulder,” he said. “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.”
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