Blog Article
Pat Fitzgerald Is 17-38 Against Ranked Teams. Michigan State Just Hired Him To Beat Ohio State.
Everybody’s talking about the baggage.
The hazing scandal. The two years away. The “100 percent vindicated” quote that will resurface every time the Spartans lose back-to-back games.
That’s the easy narrative.
But the harder question—the one that actually determines whether this hire works—is hiding in plain sight.
It’s in the splits.
.309 Against Ranked. .469 On The Road. 5-8 In Bowls.
Pat Fitzgerald went 118-106 in 17 seasons at Northwestern.
Respectable. Ten bowl trips. Two Big Ten West titles. Five AP Top-25 finishes.
But peel back the overall record and you find a coach with real vulnerabilities.
Home: 65-44 (.596) Away: 46-52 (.469) vs Ranked: 17-38 (.309) Bowl Games: 5-8 (.385)
That’s a below-.500 road coach.
That’s a coach who won fewer than one in three games against ranked opponents. That’s a coach who went 5-8 in bowl games—games where both teams have a month to prepare.
These aren’t cherry-picked stats.
They’re the games that define whether you’re building a program or just surviving.
Northwestern Was Hard. But That Only Explains So Much.
Northwestern is one of the hardest jobs in college football.
Elite academic standards. A tiny recruiting pool. A fan base that treats sellouts as a pleasant surprise.
The fact that Fitzgerald won anything there is a testament to his culture-building ability.
Michigan State doesn’t have those constraints.
It’s a large state school with standard admission requirements, a passionate fan base, and recruiting access across the Midwest that Northwestern could never match. In theory, Fitzgerald’s ceiling should rise with better raw material.
But here’s the uncomfortable question.
Do the splits improve with better players—or are they baked into his coaching DNA?
His record against ranked opponents wasn’t a talent problem.
It was a performance problem. Scheme. Adjustments. Preparation against elite competition.
At Northwestern, he was almost always the underdog.
We never got to see whether he could win with talent, because he rarely had it. Michigan State is betting the answer is yes.
The splits suggest they should be nervous.
Ohio State. Michigan. Oregon. USC. Penn State. Good Luck.
The league Fitzgerald left isn’t the league he’s entering.
In 2022, the Big Ten West was a knife fight between Northwestern, Iowa, Purdue, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Winnable.
In 2026, Michigan State’s conference includes Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Oregon, USC, and Washington.
The road schedule alone is a gauntlet.
If Fitzgerald’s .469 road record and .309 mark against ranked opponents translate to East Lansing, the Spartans are looking at 5-7 wins as the ceiling, not the floor. And with his late-tenure decline at Northwestern (3-9, 3-9, 1-11 in his final three seasons), there’s evidence he struggled to adapt even before the two-year absence.
That absence matters.
Fitzgerald has been off the sideline since July 2023—the most transformative period in college football history. Full NIL monetization. The transfer portal as the primary roster-building mechanism. The rise of GM and personnel departments.
His Northwestern teams were culture-first, developmental, and scheme-sound.
They were never portal-aggressive or NIL-forward.
Can he adapt at 50?
The splits don’t answer that question. But they don’t inspire confidence either.
If The Splits Hold, MSU Will Have Spent $50 Million On Nothing.
Michigan State structured this deal carefully.
Five years. $30 million total. Heavily incentive-laden.
Year 1 pays $5 million, escalating $500K annually.
Bonuses start at $500K for six wins and climb to $1.5 million for eight-plus. There’s also an automatic one-year extension trigger if he hits seven regular-season wins in any of his first three seasons.
On paper, this looks like smart risk management.
MSU isn’t betting the house—especially after eating Jonathan Smith’s $30 million buyout.
But look closer.
The extension trigger at seven wins is generous for a program that went 5-7 and 4-8 under Smith. If Fitzgerald clears that bar once, MSU is locked in for another year. And if the splits hold—if he’s a 5-6 win coach in this league—what does it actually cost to move on?
Recent buyouts have been coach-friendly disasters.
Mark Stoops leveraged Kentucky into a deal that made him nearly unfireable. Hugh Freeze’s Auburn contract guaranteed generational wealth regardless of performance.
Schools are learning the hard way that buyout math matters more than press conference optimism.
MSU’s deal isn’t in that category.
But it’s not airtight either. If Fitzgerald underperforms, the Spartans will have spent $30 million on Jonathan Smith, another $20-25 million on Fitzgerald, and still be looking for answers.
That’s $50+ million for five years of losing seasons.
A Gamble, Not A Plan.
This hire makes sense on paper.
Fitzgerald elevated Northwestern beyond its resource baseline. Michigan State offers more to work with than he ever had in Evanston. The price is reasonable. The upside is real.
But the splits tell a cautionary tale.
A .309 record against ranked opponents doesn’t magically improve because you moved 100 miles east. A below-.500 road record doesn’t fix itself with better facilities. And a coach who went 7-29 in his final three seasons—then spent two years away from the sport’s biggest structural shift—is not a sure thing.
Michigan State is betting Fitzgerald can adapt, modernize, and win the games that matter.
The splits say that’s a gamble, not a plan.
Coaches Hot Seat Verdict: High-variance, defensible. Clear path to success if he staffs aggressively and embraces the portal/NIL infrastructure. Clear path to another coaching search by 2028 if he doesn’t.
