The prevailing theme of Pat Fitzgerald’s introductory press conference as the new head coach of the Michigan State football program was “alignment.” Primarily, alignment with the man who introduced him that December day in East Lansing, athletic director J Batt.
Batt was hired as Michigan State’s athletic director in June 2025, arriving from Georgia Tech with a reputation as one of the best fundraisers in college sports. A year later, he’s heading to Kentucky before his biggest hire, Fitzgerald, ever puts a team on the field.
On Monday morning, it was announced that Batt will succeed Mitch Barnhart in Lexington as the next athletic director at Kentucky. Suddenly, the alignment that birthed Spartan Ventures, the fundraising arm of the Michigan State Athletic Department, set to launch on July 1, and aimed to set up Fitzgerald to bring the Spartans back to Big Ten relevance, is gone.
Michigan State needs to get the ‘alignment’ right with its next AD hire
It’s not just Batt who left East Lansing high and dry. This news comes a month after Michigan State president Kevin Guskiewicz departed for the same role at Clemson. That’s a serious amount of turnover for a school that has had three ADs since 2021 and is now preparing to hire its fourth.
Whoever ultimately becomes Batt’s successor will be tied to Fitzgerald, who signed a five-year contract that runs through 2031. The former Northwestern head coach, who was fired after an independent investigation uncovered hazing and player mistreatment, was something of a controversial hire by Batt.
Now, the 51-year-old head coach is tasked with adapting to the NIL, Transfer Portal, and revenue-sharing era, which was still in its early stages in 2022, his final year at Northwestern. And, he’ll need to do so without the guidance of Batt, who was instrumental in orchestrating a significant turnaround at Georgia Tech with head coach Brent Key, and who previously worked as the chief operating officer and chief revenue officer at Alabama from 2017 to 2022.
Batt was supposed to be the AD who brought Michigan State into the modern era of money in college sports. The creation of Spartan Ventures was a step in that direction, but without Batt, the fundraising efforts could potentially stall
Alignment isn’t just about the AD and the head coach being on the same page when it comes to a vision for the program. Alignment in this day and age means a clear pathway to bring in the money and an understanding of how it’s to be spent. That’s what Fitzgerald needs to pull the Spartans out of the Big Ten basement: money. Batt was there to deliver it, and now he’s gone. So what does that mean for the Michigan State football program?
Well, it remains to be seen, but it’s not a great sign that after a year in East Lansing, Batt was so quick to jump ship to an SEC basketball school similarly trying to elevate its standing on the football field with a first-year head coach.
It's not that Fitzgerald can no longer be the savior of the program. That's still on the table. It's just going to be much tougher after losing his AD at the peak of the 2027 recruiting cycle.
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