Everything Pat Fitzgerald said from the podium at Big Ten Media Days

Pat Fitzgerald addressed reporters at Big Ten Media Days for the first time as head coach of Michigan State football on Wednesday. Here’s everything he had to say from the podium, via ASAP Sports.

—

PAT FITZGERALD: Good morning to everybody. It’s great to be back here in Chicago and see so many familiar faces and friendly faces. I appreciate you covering Michigan State football, the Big Ten, the best conference in the country.

I want to say a special thank you to Tony Petitti, the best commissioner in college athletics, for his leadership, his unselfish nature which he’s going about leading the Big Ten, and then also for his friendship. He’s been just absolutely outstanding, as I’ve embarked on my journey up in East Lansing, so I appreciate you and your entire staff.

It’s been an incredibly busy few months for us up in East Lansing, and fired up for seven days from now to get going in training camp. I feel really great about our staff and our young men heading into the season. Michigan State is a special place. You can achieve championships and get a great degree from a great school, and we’re looking forward to taking this program back to where it belongs at the highest level.

I said it in my press conference when I got introduced, that this was born at Michigan State, and that’s how we’re going to play. We’re going to play smart. We’re going to play tough. We’re going to play with discipline. That’s what we’ve been working on the entire off-season.

Like I said earlier, I can’t believe that camp starts in seven days, and I can’t wait to get back on the field with the guys. We’ve had a really productive off-season. Joel Welsh and our strength have been have been absolutely outstanding, and our guys have been working incredibly hard.

The next phase obviously starts, and the fourth phase is probably the most important, as we get into training camp.

We’ve brought three incredible student-athletes with us that for our fans really need to introduction, but for everybody today, senior linebacker Jordan Hall. It’s his fourth year in East Lansing, our only senior that’s been there for four years. He’s been a role model on and off the field. When he made the decision to stay as a Spartan, it was a huge, huge boost for our locker room. Was a captain last year. He’s also our team’s AFCA Good Works Team nominee, and his two-time academic all-Big Ten honoree. He’s an outstanding middle linebacker. He loves the game. But he’s just an all-around just special, special guy.

Our quarterback Alessio Milivojevic. He’s back home here in Chicago. Is a young man from out in Naperville. He’s our unequivocal team leader. He’s met with every player that we brought on campus during the portal, and it was twofold. He’s smart enough to get a free meal, and number two, also a great leader to get to know the guys that we’re trying to bring in.

But he’s just got all the leadership skills that you’re looking for, that it factor, and we’re excited for him to lead our football team this year.

And then Nikai Martinez, fifth-year safety coming back from last year. He’s an unequivocal team leader. He’s determined. He’s focused. He’s exactly what you want to call a glue guy that keeps the entire football program together.

I’ll wrap it up. I know you all have a lot of questions. Maybe I’ll answer some of PJ’s questions that you guys didn’t get to ask him (laughter.) Great job by my good friend PJ. It’s an honor and privilege to be the head football coach at Michigan State. I’m honored to be back in the Big Ten and look forward to getting the Spartan program back to where it belongs.

A big thank you to Spartan Nation. They’ve been so welcoming to myself, my family and our entire staff and all of our newcomers. We look forward to making you proud, and we can’t wait to be in Spartan Stadium in 37 days as we get ready to take on Toledo. With that, I’ll answer any and all questions that you may have.

Q. It’s only been about three or four years, but it feels like so much has changed. What to you stands out as changing so rapidly and so fast in the college football landscape since you were last a head coach?

PAT FITZGERALD: Yeah, thanks for the question. I think the biggest thing that’s changed is basically the end of your season until you start the spring semester. So the retention of your roster, and then obviously the acquisition of talent that you get through the portal. That’s the biggest change.

Yeah, there’s a financial component to it and rev share, NIL and all that, but to me that’s been the biggest change.

Guys want to be developed. They want to be coached. Our staff motto is to be the best player development staff in the country, and guys want that, and we’re going to do it holistically.

Our first semester, we’ve got great student-athletes. We had a 3.22 team GPA highest in program history. Mandy and her team do an unbelievable job with our academics. Our guys want that and they embody that. So it’s bigger than just kind of maybe the things that get covered in the media. Guys still want to be developed holistically.

Q. Obviously this is your first Big Ten Media Day at Michigan State. What are your emotions like right now being back in this environment, leading a program again after a few years off but also in a place and a town where you spent a lot of time?

PAT FITZGERALD: Yeah, thanks for the question. It’s great to be selfishly home. Got a chance to see my wife yesterday. That was kind of cool. I haven’t seen her in like a month. We get to move into our new home when I go back on Thursday, so I’m excited about that.

My emotions are irrelevant. I’ve been entrusted with a leadership position of one of the most successful and historical football programs in the country, and it’s a great honor. I just love our alignment. To have Kevin Guskiewicz back as our president. I just can’t wait to lock arms with him as we move forward. I got a great text from him last night, and to have him to be a Spartan for a long time, I couldn’t be more excited.

My emotions are I’m just excited to be in a leadership role again. But what about me is irrelevant, it’s all about our guys and developing our program.

Q. You said after the spring game and your press conference that you had only three defined starters for week one. Has the off-season program kind of determined any of that for you?

PAT FITZGERALD: You know, we’ve kind of walked through a journey of the third quarter of our preparation for this year, obviously, in the summer. I feel great about our competitive depth. That’s what’s jumped out to me over the summer.

I think most importantly, like with our offensive line, there’s 10 or 11 guys that are competing for starting roles. When I took over the program, it was a very different story. I look forward to seeing how this plays out in the first maybe 10 to 14 days of training camp, not only that position but every position, as we start to solidify our roster.

I think for the Spartan Nation, especially early, you’re going to see us play a lot of players. It may be one thing that’s not being talked about maybe as much as I thought it would be is the five-year rule. There’s no more redshirting, so we have access to our entire rosters.

I think that will be a huge change as we move forward throughout the year, where you’re not having to navigate the four-game, are we redshirting, are we playing game, and then beyond that, the ability to have your entire roster that you can continue to develop to have those guys ready, and as a motivator for no matter who’s on your roster, young or old, there’s an opportunity for you to play.

I hope we reconsider the 74 restriction of players and road trips and the Big Ten I’d like that to be case by case or team by team, or at least at a minimum move up to 80. So now we can have really a true travel roster where we can have enough depth to make sure as a road team, the playing field is leveled a little bit.

But outside of that, I’m excited to have access to our whole roster.

Q. In 2026, I’m just wondering, what would success and progress look like, and how will you be measuring that going into the season?

PAT FITZGERALD: Yeah, I think you’re going to have 18 head football coaches walk up here and have an expectation to win the Big Ten Championship, and if you don’t have that expectation, I don’t know why you do it. I have no idea why you do it. That’s our expectation.

When I was a student-athlete, I heard this guy once say we’re going to take the purple to Pasadena and people laughed at him, and we’re going to take the green back to being Big Ten champions, and we were going to do it with everybody and we need everybody.

Tom Izzo, he’s been a great mentor, a great friend, his staff, the Spartan Nation. We had Spartan Dog Com last week, and to see all the guys come back, we stand upon their shoulders, we’re going to draw upon their wisdom, their success. We’re going to have them educated, not only this team but our teams moving forward, and we’re going to get back to playing tough, hard-nosed Spartan football that’s going to make our fan base and Spartan Nation proud.

Expectations are to win the Big Ten Championship full stop, and if a head coach walks up here and doesn’t say that, then I’d want to check their pulse.

Q. You talked about how much things have changed, but I’m wondering specifically the depth of the league, how different is it now than when you were in the Big Ten the last time?

PAT FITZGERALD: Yeah, when you go to 18 teams and you add the four teams we added from the West Coast, we added championship-level teams, so the competition is at an all-time high, and that’s what prospective student-athletes out of high school and then transfers want to be a part of. They want to compete at the highest level. They can show case their skills, and they want to have an opportunity to win championships with great guys and have an opportunity to go play on Sunday, and there’s no better conference to do it than the Big Ten.

Q. You’re coming back into the Big Ten conference like you just stated after 17 years of tenure in an unfortunate situation at Northwestern. Are you playing with sort of a chip on your shoulder with that, and was coming back to the Big Ten a big part of your decision to come to Michigan State?

PAT FITZGERALD: When President Guskiewicz came to see me, and it happened fast, and J Batt, I was praying and hopeful it was going to work itself out. I wasn’t going to walk to East Lansing, I was going to sprint. The opportunity once it was presented to myself, Stacey and our family, it was a no-brainer. It’s been even better since the moment we walked off the plane and everybody mentioning welcome home, we’ve felt that every day, not only myself, my family, our staff, our support staff and our players, and we’re grateful for that, for everybody in East Lansing, mid Michigan and Spartan Nation.

I wouldn’t say I have a chip on my shoulder. 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.

Q. You’ve already mentioned Jordan Hall and Les being these leaders of the team immediately as you came in. Is there any player that has surprised you with their vocal leadership since you’ve arrived?

PAT FITZGERALD: Yeah, Nikai for sure, Nikai Martinez has been outstanding. When you talk about like a glue guy, from the men that he made the decision to come back and be a Spartan, it was all the over his face and his eyes and he’s backed with up with his action. Everything he does is about holding himself and his teammates accountable, and it’s been a joy.

I’m ecstatic just like Jordan and Les, when they decided to come back, but when I met with Joe Rossi about who was critical to make sure they came back, one of the first names that came out was Nikai Martinez, and he’s backed it up every day.

Q. I was wondering, as you sat there in that interim, that sabbatical, what did you come to grips with yourself? What did you find that you wanted to change maybe about your approach? I remember talking with Urban Meyer about that in-between Florida and Ohio State, and he changed a lot of things about himself. What did you do?

PAT FITZGERALD: Yeah, I was a volunteer dad at Loyola Academy High School running the scout offense, so I was making sure we ran good routes for our defense. I mean, like, I wasn’t just playing golf and hanging out at a beach sipping something strong. I was staying a part of it, staying around it.

A lot of my friends in the profession allowed me to go in — special thanks to dean of the Big Ten, Kirk Ferentz was incredibly gracious to me, allowed me, obviously my son Ryan who plays for the Hawkeyes, to be able to be there, a part of it. There’s many other coaches that I just researched what they do, how they do it, and just kind of turned the dials a little bit, and then get up to speed on how I wanted to build our roster.

Bryan Gasser is our great GM, and gas And I, how we wanted to build not only this roster but then our plan as we move forward, and then make sure I went to an institution that was hungry to win in football and that football mattered. Obviously our basketball program, what Adam does with our hockey program — the list goes on and on of top-level Big Ten national-caliber programs, I wanted to be at a place where our football needed to go back to that, and that’s what we really tried to inject into the community and the program that we’re going to get this thing back and we felt it in return from the Spartan Nation.

Q. I wanted to talk to you about LeVar Woods, who you hired from Iowa, as your special teams coordinator and assistant head coach. Can you talk about the impact he has made since you made the hire?

PAT FITZGERALD: Yeah, LeVar has been outstanding. The special teams that he’s produced over a long time at Iowa speaks for itself, top in the Big Ten, you could argue top in the nation.

You guys get to do it as reporters; I tailgated last year in Iowa City. I get it now. It’s pretty cool. This tailgating thing is awesome.

I got to know Coach Woods and his great family because our sons are freshmen together at Iowa, now sophomores, and just obviously was a fan of him from afar.

Then to watch the way that he’s gone about building our special teams units is as advertised. He’s going to be a head coach. That was part of the things that I talked to him about bringing him to East Lansing is I’d like to help you take that next step. Here’s the plan. He’s my right-hand man right now, when it comes to the coaching staff. I believe we’ve got three great coordinators with he, Joe Rossi and Nick Sheridan that are going to help us develop our team, not only this year but into the future.