Pat Fitzgerald had already finished Michigan State’s first practice of fall camp when he found something he did not like.
Two Gatorade bottles. Some discarded chewies. All sitting near a garbage can.
Fitzgerald picked them up himself.
Then he went back to his football team.
“I took a piece of their ass afterwards,” Fitzgerald said.
Welcome to fall camp under Pat Fitzgerald.
The garbage was insignificant. The decision to leave it there was not.
“Because the standard is we’re going to leave everything – everywhere we go, we’re going to leave it better than we found it,” Fitzgerald said. “We should take great pride in being a Spartan and how we do things, not some of the time, but all the time.”
His players got the message.
Maybe a little too late.
“The minute I got done, some guys tried to pick up,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s too late for that now.”
Next time, Fitzgerald promised, there will be a “little fun run” attached to the lesson.
But this was not really about two bottles and some Chewies.
It was about shirts.
It was about water breaks.
It was about what the team room looks like when nobody important is expected to walk through the door.
And it was about Fitzgerald beginning the painstaking process of teaching Michigan State exactly what he believes a championship program looks like before anyone starts talking seriously about whether it can become one.
“Like, how we look in practice,” Fitzgerald said. “We shouldn’t have our tails hanging out of our shirts. We shouldn’t have tails streaming down to the ground. It’s not what we do.”
Then Fitzgerald made the distinction considerably more forcefully.
“I don’t really give a shit if they do that other places,” he said. “That’s not what we’re going to do. This is how we’re going to do it.”
There may eventually come a day when Fitzgerald no longer has to tell Michigan State players to tuck in their shirts, organize a water break correctly, clean up the team room, or pick up trash they encounter on the way off the practice field.
Thursday was not that day.
And Fitzgerald knows the program he inherited is nowhere near the point where those details can be assumed.
“Once we get to a point where we don’t have to have those conversations anymore, then we’ll reinforce it even harder,” Fitzgerald said. “So we’re building a standard of expectation. Because that’s got to be the bedrock we build this thing on. It’s not going to be built on sand.”
That was the unmistakable theme of Michigan State’s first day of fall camp.
The Spartans finally put the helmets back on. Fitzgerald saw bigger bodies and a roster that looked noticeably different after a summer in Joel Welsh’s strength program. Position battles began moving toward resolution. The countdown toward the season became real.
And the head coach spent part of his first post-practice press conference talking about tucked-in shirts and garbage.
Because to Fitzgerald, those things are not separate from winning.
They are where winning starts.
“It’s a path less traveled,” Fitzgerald said. “And to do something special, we’ve got to get ourselves up to a championship standard. And that’s everybody that touches the Spartan football program.”
Michigan State hired Fitzgerald to find out whether he can build another championship program.
On the first day of fall camp, he offered perhaps the clearest explanation yet of how he intends to try.
First, teach everyone in the building what the standard is.
Then make sure nobody has to be told twice.
INSIDE:
Why Fitzgerald believes Michigan State finally “looks the part” physically after a summer under Joel Welsh
The practice details he is already obsessing over – including water breaks, tempo, communication, and recovery
Why players are living in dorms, sharing rooms, and surrendering their car and scooter keys during camp
How Fitzgerald plans to physically and mentally harden the Spartans for Big Ten football
The three benchmarks he will use to determine whether Michigan State is actually improving
Why the start of fall camp still “impacts your soul” after a lifetime in the game
Why Fitzgerald refuses to back away from openly talking about winning a Big Ten championship
And why, even after an encouraging first day, his message remains the same: “It will never ever be good enough.”
