Dan Bartholomae has had an eventful start to his Michigan State tenure, taking over as athletic director in the middle of first-year head coach Pat Fitzgerald’s rebuild. He obviously has other things on the mind, but his main priority right now is making sure the football program is set up to be competitive.
It’s always interesting to see if a new athletic director has the recently-hired head football coach’s back, and it appears that Bartholomae does indeed have Fitzgerald’s, defending his middle finger moment from the Illinois game.
And that’s a great sign.
MSU AD Dan Bartholomae tells @TonyPaul1984 he had no issue with Pat Fitzgerald’s middle finger last Saturday. In fact, Dan appreciated how it got the crowd riled up.
— Connor Earegood (@ConnorEaregood) October 16, 2026
"We are not sitting here trying to be choir children”@detroitnews pic.twitter.com/BMWUarsvFe
Bartholomae is apparently “unbothered” by the middle finger aimed toward the officials during a controversial botched call during the Illinois game. Fitzgerald addressed the team and apologized but said he doesn’t apologize for the message behind it and the fact that he’ll always defend his guys and the school. Bartholomae agrees.
That’s a great sign for the future.
Fitzgerald said it recently that when the board, the president, the AD, and the coaches are all on the same page, special things can happen. Well, everyone’s on the same page so we should expect special things to happen soon.
Plus, it wouldn’t look all that great if Fitzgerald said that he didn’t apologize for having his team’s back and Bartholomae came out a few days later and said “that was unacceptable under any circumstances”.
Michigan State has a head football coach and athletic director on the same page. Let’s see if that turns into what Fitzgerald predicted.
Michigan State football is in good hands
This is a bold prediction, but Bartholomae is saying all the right things and promising competitive financial backing for the football program. He did it at Western Michigan in a short period of time and now he’s going to do it at Michigan State with even more resources and donors at his disposal.
Bartholomae believes in Fitzgerald and has said that he is going to set the football program up to be competitive immediately so the ball will be in the Spartan head coach’s court.
If Bartholomae is setting aside a good chunk of money for NIL, recruiting, and roster-building, Michigan State is going to compete with the big boys in the conference every offseason. That’s going to start with the transfer portal this coming offseason as well as the 2027 recruiting class which Fitzgerald is working hard to build up behind the scenes — it’s paying off if you look at the visitors list for the Northwestern game.
Not only will Bartholomae help turn the program around and make it a contender once again, especially in the new 24-team playoff format, but Fitzgerald will do big things.
If Tom Izzo is raving about you as a coach and making bold predictions about the future of the football program, you know it’s in good hands.
I’m not saying that it’s going to happen overnight, but if the Spartans can follow up this disappointing 2026 season with a bowl berth in 2027 and then playoff contention in 2028, we’ll know exactly who to thank for the turnaround.
Add us as a preferred source on Google