J Batt has reportedly wasted zero time in finding Jonathan Smith’s replacement at Michigan State. The first-year athletic director was hired to get the athletic department turned around, starting with the football program, and he’s made his first big decision.
Well, his first major decision was to fire second-year head coach on Sunday afternoon, but he’s quickly followed that up with a replacement for Smith, according to reports.
In fact, according to the Detroit Free Press, Michigan State has already made the move to hire Fitzgerald to replace Smith just hours after making the call to fire the second-year coach.
SOURCES: #MichiganState is set to hire Pat Fitzgerald as the school’s next head coach.
— Justin Thind (@JustinThind) November 30, 2025
The former #Northwestern coach will be getting major donor support. More detail on that front will be out in the coming week.
Read (FREE): https://t.co/v27GrdGdQN
(First: Detroit Free Press) pic.twitter.com/8fPqeI3WPv
It’s amazing how fast this all happened, but Batt didn’t want to waste any time and risk losing who was rumored to be his top candidate.
The former Northwestern head coach won 110 games in Evanston before he was let go by the athletic department amid controversy. He was still the most successful leader that the Wildcats had and he was even a candidate to be an NFL head coach at one point in time. People seem to forget that his name was mentioned when the biggest jobs opened up, and he had to shoot down rumors seemingly every cycle.
Now, he’s back in the college coaching ranks after taking a couple of years off, and he’s going back to the Big Ten where he’ll lead a program that he’s very familiar with. Fitzgerald and Mark Dantonio had some great battles during the 2010s.
How does Fitzgerald fit at Michigan State? There’s obviously some concern about his ability to adjust to the transfer portal and NIL era because he only got a taste of it before he departed Northwestern, but it sounds like Batt and the athletic department are going to give him the resources he needs to be successful in this new age. He is a defensive-minded head coach who shows plenty of emotion on the sidelines which is the exact opposite of Smith — fans begged for this.
While you’re going to see plenty of mixed reviews, this is going to be looked at as a solid hire nationally despite the way his Northwestern career ended.
It feels like Fitzgerald fits the Michigan State mold to a T.