The news everyone suspected was coming has been confirmed, with Michigan State athletic director J Batt leaving to take the same post at the University of Kentucky. While this wasn't a huge surprise, the timing couldn't have been worse for the school.
This means Michigan State will have lost both Batt and former university president Kevin Guskiewicz within weeks of each other. The "alignment" head football coach Pat Fitzgerald spoke about has now run into a huge pothole, and Michigan State needs to fix it fast.
Now, Michigan State is faced with having to replace its AD and its president in the middle of summer, when things are supposed to have already settled in.
Where does Michigan State go from here to fill the AD seat?
An obvious choice to keep things stable and to keep it in the family is Michigan State Executive Deputy AD and Chief Operating Officer, Jon Palumbo. While that may sound like the path of least resistance, it's actually the choice that makes the most sense.
Beyond already being ensconced in the East Lansing community, Palumbo has a wealth of experience running athletic departments. He spent nearly three years at Georgia Tech (working with J Batt) as the Executive Deputy AD and Chief Operating Officer, as well as serving as the interim AD from June 4 to July 14, 2025.
Prior to his term in Atlanta, Palumbo was the AD at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi for four years, following six years as the Deputy AD at VCU. His sports executive career started at Maryland, where he served as associate AD for four years.
So the experience is there. The man knows the ins and outs of running an athletic department front office. But some of the biggest reasons to move Palumbo into the Michigan State AD role leans into what he's doing currently.
Palumbo and Batt laid the groundwork for some big fundraising projects at Michigan State, such as Spartan Ventures. Keeping at least one name previously involved with these key projects in the AD chair will keep the donors from growing concerned. If Michigan State wants to keep up monetarily with other Big Ten programs, these fundraisers will need to be lucrative.
Keeping some stability with the coaches should also be a priority for the university. There could potentially be some outside candidates that would make sense, but would another major change cause too many issues?
The current coaches -- Pat Fitzgerald, Tom Izzo, Robyn Fralick, Adam Nightingale, among others -- already have a familiarity and working relationship with Palumbo. Remaining on a clear path with them needs to be a big consideration.
Hopefully, with the rumors that had been flying around about Batt's departure, the administrators have already started to have conversations with all the key figures, including Palumbo, to prevent this from turning into an elongated and potentially fruitless search.
With Palumbo, Michigan State knows what they're getting, and can focus on continuing the work that he and J Batt began, rather than wiping the slate clean and having to figure out a new direction.
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