Major college football program reportedly set to hire Pat Fitzgerald as head coach

The music is coming to a stop and chairs are filling up on the college football coaching carousel. A coach you wish to hire? You better grab him fast. The latest news is that one major Big Ten program has both fired their head coach and then hired a new one all within about one Sunday afternoon.

Reports surfaced following Saturday’s final slate of college football regular season games that Michigan State no longer wished to move their program forward under the direction of Jonathan Smith. He was fired and paid more than $30 million in buyout after just two seasons at MSU, and the decision even came on the heels of a win the previous night against Maryland.

Not wishing to waste any time, apparently, Michigan State leadership sparked up quick smoke with a former long-time Big Ten leader: Pat Fitzgerald. He was immediately rumored as a Sparty candidate of high consideration and by later in the afternoon, hardly tea time by British standards, reports from trusted sources reported that Fitzgerald was, in fact, set to be the new Michigan State coach.

“It appears Pat Fitzgerald will get his chance to return to coaching along the banks of the Red Cedar River,” the Detroit Free Press posted in a story on Sunday. Michigan State football intends to hire the former Northwestern coach after firing Jonathan Smith after two seasons, two people with knowledge of the situation who couldn’t speak publicly confirmed to the Detroit Free Press and Lansing State Journal.”

That local report did note that, as of their writing, no contract had been signed. But clearly, Michigan State appears to have locked in on their man of the future and are planning to make Fitzgerald the new Spartans’ head football coach.

Pat Fitzgerald was the head coach at only one other program, Northwestern, of course. He took over the Wildcat program in 2006 and guided it for 17 years, including three peak 10-win seasons and five years overall landing NW in the final AP Poll, their best a 10th-place finish in 2020 after a 7-2 record and Citrus Bowl victory.

In summer of 2023, reports surfaced of “widespread hazing” within the Northwestern details, starting a scandal which ultimately got Fitzgerald fired just a month before the ’23 football season began. After a few years away from major college football, he’s now back right where he’s comfortable in the Big Ten.