Fitz to Michigan State
- Thread starter wildcatcoaster
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Positive reactions from CFB Twitter, notably here OSU alum Cardale Jones and comments from other Buckeye fans. I think they’re hopeful to see him beat UMich.
I’m seeing a lot of ridicule from the peanut gallery too. Quoting his record in the final three full seasons.
Not sure that’s fair (these guys don’t realize he replaced Hank with JON!) but we will see if Fitz gets the last laugh.
Not sure that’s fair (these guys don’t realize he replaced Hank with JON!) but we will see if Fitz gets the last laugh.
A lot of irritation from MSU fans on reddits /CFB. /CFB tends to be one of the least “reddit”-like places on Reddit with some of the most normal people on that platform filled with terrible people… but it’s still Reddit so YMMV.
I’m genuinely interested to see how it goes. Rumors abound that a major donor supported Fitz and intends to financially support NIL
I’m genuinely interested to see how it goes. Rumors abound that a major donor supported Fitz and intends to financially support NIL
It’s good to have Ishbia in your corner.
Fitz will succeed if he gets good assistants.
I have no doubt that he'll adjust easily to the current/modern NIL system; he's a great recruiter otherwise and having a brand like MSU, he'll be able to sell that to recruits.
It just comes back to the assistants; as long as he finds his Hank to anchor the defense, they'll be a tough out.
I saw that, but doesn’t seem credible to me - The idea that someone wasn’t involved in MSU sports previously is now gonna drop 400 million because they hired Fitzgerald. I’m sure major donors are involved. They always are. But I wonder how much of this is genuine, new money whether it’s really an endowment as opposed to war chest. Will know soon enough once we see who starts transferring there.
Good luck to Fitz at MSU where the football program has struggled recently. Lots of pros (and cons) but Fitz’s experience and mostly success in a BigTen program given academic requirements are pluses and maybe they got an experienced head coach at a discount. Don’t know the degree of real interest by other programs for Fitz’s services but maybe a smart move by MSU to lock him in sooner rather than later in case other competing offers came forth as the coaching carousel speeds up. Early hire also allows Fitz to jump into recruiting. Can Fitz spark a revival of a declining Sparty football program that has a history being overshadowed by Michigan’s success? Also will be interesting who Fitz selects to be on his staff.
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MSU is at its best when it has a dynamic offense . MSU fans won't be thrilled with Fitz ball unless he has changed. My MSU grad son and his cohort aren't at all happy with this choice.
It is definitely going to be a mixed bag of reactions, especially given his recent W-L record. It’s unconventional for a P4 team to make a hire like this.
I’ll be interested to see how well he will be able to do hiring assistants and recruiting at MSU. I am an affiliated faculty member of MSU so I can root for him outside of any NU-MSU game.
It’s Mat Ishbia, and he’s all in. Played for Izzo at MSU.
Don't forget, he has had a couple years off to contemplate just what the new system is and is not. And had a chance to evaluate who he might go after for assistants. Most HCs have to adjust on the fly while they are dealing with dozens of other issues at the same time. And there he will have no real issues with admissions. He will be able to bring in anyone. Would not have been great with the old East West having to face dOSU, PSU and Mich every year, but in the new format, he will have a reasonable chance to succeed.
We, on the other hand, look like we will be struggling mightily. No quick fixes. We will be paying for what Schill did for the next 10-20 years
Fitz is real real good at getting the key rich guy around the department in his corner
Perfectly fair since that was his decision.
And it wasn't just his mishandling of the DC position, but repeated mishandling of staff on the other side of the ball.
That's the thing tho, aside from Hank (who basically fell into his lap), Fitz has a rather poor record when it comes to hiring coordinators.
Had a good chuckle when a no of PSU posters brought up Fitz for their HC search; would basically be replacing Franklin with a less cheesy version (Franklin and Fitz shared many of the same flaws as HCs).
In my view, Fitz is a talented and well-intentioned guy who was promoted too fast. I'vs seen the promoted too fast archetype one too many times in my corporate life. It leaves insufficient time to get the fundamentals in place - and it Fitz's case resulted in at least some hubris. (the JON hiring being the high water mark of said hubris). He's has a chance to reflect now - if he's done so with some humility and introspection, he could end up being great for MSU. I'm 50/50 - we'll see. From his explanations of what happened in our locker room, I see a guy who was deflecting rather than trying to be accountable. Then again, tens of millions of dollars were hanging in the balance.
“In my view, Fitz is a talented and well-intentioned guy who was promoted too fast. I'vs seen the promoted too fast archetype one too many times in my corporate life. It leaves insufficient time to get the fundamentals in place - and it Fitz's case resulted in at least some hubris.”
I agree and think Fitz was on course to receive the time and experience he needed to mature into the head coaching position. That plan was derailed with the tragic sudden passing of Randy Walker and NU made the decision to elevate Fitz- maybe before he was ready to take the helm. With his background with NU’s program he seemed the obvious choice at the time to take over and he did well most of his career as HC. Don’t know if he got complacent after signing his big contract that led to the dropoff in the last few seasons at NU when things fell apart. I think he is a good guy and as others have mentioned perhaps during his time off from coaching he has spent time reflecting on why the program went downhill and how he might improve as a head coach. Things have also changed with NIL’s impact so Fitz is facing a brave new world different from when he left.
I agree and think Fitz was on course to receive the time and experience he needed to mature into the head coaching position. That plan was derailed with the tragic sudden passing of Randy Walker and NU made the decision to elevate Fitz- maybe before he was ready to take the helm. With his background with NU’s program he seemed the obvious choice at the time to take over and he did well most of his career as HC. Don’t know if he got complacent after signing his big contract that led to the dropoff in the last few seasons at NU when things fell apart. I think he is a good guy and as others have mentioned perhaps during his time off from coaching he has spent time reflecting on why the program went downhill and how he might improve as a head coach. Things have also changed with NIL’s impact so Fitz is facing a brave new world different from when he left.
Agree; Franklin and Fitz are both great "head of program" guys. They're great football CEOs as coaches. They have good reputations with players. I think Fitz also got good at decision making in game generally.
Of course, where things went wrong for Fitz in a bunch of the later years was assistant hirings and things like that which include smaller details.
And the leash at a place like MSU will be very short. It's not like NU where he could go through rebuild years without really worrying about his seat getting hot.
How will this impact our recruiting? I’m sure his recruiting base has expanded now, but you have to think Fitz will be going to the same recruits as us pretty often since it’s where his network will be. I just have a bad feeling this is going to make it even more competitive for preps.
It certainly won’t help. I’d expect a few Loyola Ramblers to make their way to East Lansing in the coming years.
Fitz will be able to recruit with minimal academic restrictions. I expect him to produce highly ranked classes (top 25) in a few years. He’s a very good recruiter.
The key to his success on the field will be hiring capable assistants. His track record there is mixed, at best.
still, I think MSU will be in very good hands under Fitz. He should have enough resources to make that program competitive again.
The key to his success on the field will be hiring capable assistants. His track record there is mixed, at best.
still, I think MSU will be in very good hands under Fitz. He should have enough resources to make that program competitive again.
Read the MSU board on this platform, it’s overwhelming positive on this hire.
Won't affect us much if at all in terms of recruiting. He won't be recruiting with academic restrictions like what we have so his pool will be very different.
I have a mixed house. I did my grad schooling at MSU, and my wife is third generation Spartan. She was in the marching band, and Spartan Brass, and was there when they won the Men's Basketball championship. To say she bleeds green is an understatement. The only time I don't root for MSU is if they are playing Northwestern.
I like Fitz, but I never envisioned him coaching anywhere else, let alone MSU. I wish him well, as I want to see MSU do great. It will just take some getting used to. It is like seeing your friend's ex-wife now dating your other friend.
I like Fitz, but I never envisioned him coaching anywhere else, let alone MSU. I wish him well, as I want to see MSU do great. It will just take some getting used to. It is like seeing your friend's ex-wife now dating your other friend.
LOL, you are fooling yourself if you believe that. Fitz will go after the high academic kids who are good football players because they have demonstrated the discipline, work ethic and determination to succeed at multiple things in life. You win with those type of guys. Just because his pool of potential recruits will be larger, don't illude yourself into thinking that Fitz won't be competing against us for th high academic recruits.
There might be a couple of recruits that we cross paths on like how we see some of our Big Ten brethren here or there, but I doubt it ends up being anywhere near how often we see Stanford or Duke or Vandy or BC or any of those types of schools that we regularly used to see on offer lists when he was here...
Plus he's going to have a bigger NIL budget than we do presumably given they're closer to the top half of the conference in terms of resources, so he's also going to be competing for the guys that are there to get to get paid. His pool for recruits will be like 5-10x bigger than ours since he'll also be trying to rip away top recruits from the big brands.
I think he's going to do well there, but I also don't think it's going to be to our detriment (we've lost recruits to other Big Ten schools before). Whether we sink or swim is entirely on what Braun does here.
FItz is going to be all over the Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Texas high schools that represent the core of our preferred HS recruiting turf. You don’t think FItz will be all over the Chicago Catholic League recruits from Loyola, St. Rita, Mt Carmel, Montini, Nazareth etc? That’s where NU and Braun have to thrive to have any chance at a successful program. FItz will be formidable competition because of the long term relationships he has developed in recruiting territory that we desperately need to do well in.
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I don’t understand the math here. We know NU plans to distribute approximately $15M to the football players. Even with $0 NIL contributions for NU for MSU to have 5-10x player pool than NU, they would need to pay out $75M -$150M annually to the players. Is that your claim?
I think he means the pool of available recruits (due to lower academic requirements at MSU vs NU). Not the money available to recruits. (Or as you said, otherwise that statement does not make sense unless MSU will have an NFL payroll lol)
He's selling a different car now than he was a few years ago.
Absolutely no doubt Fitz will take a bite out of recruiting the region - he's probably got a very good track record of coaches who sent kids who had positive experience playing for him...unless they were among those who were hazed when he had no idea any of that was happening, but hey don't let that stand in your way of playing at the little brother school in Michigan where you can get a general studies degree in five years.
Yeah that’s my gut feel. He will have access to more players he can recruit, but I think he will still want the same guys he’s always preferred.
With Fitz going after our guys, Illinois continuing to snag some kids that fully shunned them during the Beckman and Lovie years, and PJ continuing to work Chicagoland aggressively (in addition to the usual blue bloods) I think it’s going to be harder than ever for Braun to get the kids that made us in Fitz’s heyday.
He's going to need better athletes than he can regularly get from there if he's going to last at MSU. They aren't interested in nice, clean-cut, articulate young men who present well on TV and are looking for a career after football. They're interested in beating the living cr*p out of Michigan and Ohio State.
Obviously there won't be anywhere close to 100% overlap between the recruiting pools but I think you guys are fooling yourselves thinking that Fitz won't be recruiting at the same high schools and competing with us on 5-10 recruits every year. If he is successful in snagging 2-4 guys who otherwise would have landed at NU, that will have a meaningfully detrimental impact on NU's football program. NU's margin for error has always been very small and I don't anticipate that will change anytime soon. Losing out on a couple of players in each class could very well mean the difference between a program that wins 4-5 games every year vs. 7-9 games every year.
This mindset drives me nuts. Some of you guys continue to think NU does not have very good athletes. Every time I read the game thread and see someone chalking up our struggles to our guys aren't fast enough, it just makes me realize that the average fan has no clue what he is watching. Outside of a handful of blue blood programs that attract a handful of true unicorn recruits each year, NU's top players stack up well to the rest of the P2 programs from an athleticism standpoint. NU's problem usually is a lack of depth which is key in a game of attrition like Football. NU doesn't need better athletes, they need more of the athletes they have.
As @Catmandoo78 said, it's more that we can't recruit the majority of Power 5 level recruits due to test scores/GPAs.
I don’t doubt that Fitz will look at guys with high academic standards, but his edge will be the guys we could not recruit because they would not get through our academic requirements. It’s a new sales pitch but to the same markets he already established. Plus he can pull players from the portal with the higher NIL chest. I also think he will have more money to pay coaches and can attract already proven talented coaches instead of searching the FCS (I’m not saying FCS coaches are bad, but they are unproven at the FBS level). The only question is can he put together a winning team next year and a CFP competitive team in 2027. That is the short leash he will be on.