EAST LANSING, Mich. - Dan Bartholomae didn’t arrive in East Lansing promising patience or safe language. In his first public introduction as Michigan State’s athletic director, he leaned hard into the kind of message Spartans fans have already been hearing from the football side: win big, and don’t apologize for saying it out loud.
MSU announced Monday that Bartholomae, who was previously the athletic director at Western Michigan, would take over the same job in East Lansing. He officially begins on August 31, and on Wednesday evening he made it clear he sees the job as one with championship expectations attached.
“I’m competitive,” Bartholomae said during the formal, televised portion of his intro presser. “We will compete and we will win at the highest levels, and when you compete in the Big Ten Conference, that means national championships.
I walked into the administrative building yesterday; I walked by that wall of national championships at the entrance to our offices on the way to this press conference, and I thought to myself, 'Folks, it has been too long.' We will play to win.”
That message fit neatly with what Michigan State’s new football coach, Pat Fitzgerald, has already been saying, and it also lines up with the way Tom Izzo and Adam Nightingale operate. At MSU, the championship talk is not being treated like a lofty dream - it’s being presented as the standard.
Bartholomae said that kind of language was welcomed at Western Michigan, even if the ceiling there looked very different.
“I think talking that way was welcomed [at WMU],” he said. “What's exciting about this place is that I'm not the only one walking around talking that way.
It's my job to activate that and draw a plan together and figure out a way to get it done. "
There was also a comfort level to the hire that went beyond the formal process. Bartholomae already had ties to the people who matter most around the department, and he pointed to separate connections with Kevin Guskiewicz, Fitzgerald and Izzo.
He first met Guskiewicz two years ago when Michigan State’s women’s soccer team played Western Michigan in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in East Lansing. Bartholomae said the two share Pittsburgh roots and a Steelers connection.
His relationship with Fitzgerald came from a much less expected place: the 2016 Pinstripe Bowl, when Northwestern and Pitt were matched up and Bartholomae was serving as Pitt’s acting athletic director. The two spent time around the bowl game and got to know each other.
“Pat Fitzgerald and his family were so warm and so welcoming in those moments. I mean, he was already built for it, right?
I was just figuring it all out. That had always left an impression on me.
In fact, I have a picture of him and I ringing the New York Stock Exchange bell.”
And Izzo? That introduction came in the form of a phone call after Bartholomae landed the Western Michigan job in 2022.
“I was sitting in my office, and I get a random call from a 517 number, and I thought, 'Well, maybe I'll pick this up,'" Bartholomae recalled. "It was Coach [Izzo], calling simply to get to know me and to offer his advice and support to a new professional in the state who he saw had big dreams and big aspirations."
Bartholomae also said the unusual shape of Michigan State’s current transition doesn’t faze him. The Spartans are headed into the 2026 football season with both a new head coach and a new athletic director, but Bartholomae is not the person who hired Fitzgerald.
That, he said, is something he understands well after 15 years at Pitt.
“You're talking to a guy who had 15 years at the University of Pittsburgh..." Bartholomae said.
"I had nine athletic directors in 15 years, and I won't even tell you how many football coaches we had in a four-year period. I think it's one of the things that I bring that might be different: I've seen transition from the other side, especially transition like that, and I know how hard it is."
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