EAST LANSING – Dan Bartholomae’s cell phone has housed a blueprint for his future for over a year. Even if he didn’t know it when his camera clicked.
When President Kevin Guskiewicz
interviewed Michigan State’s athletic director last week, Bartholomae showed him his lock screen. It was a family photo that was taken on the field at Spartan Stadium last year when Western Michigan played at MSU to open the 2025 football season.Buried deeper, more than a decade old, there’s another image that carries equal importance. It’s a photo of Bartholomae, who a few days earlier on Pitt’s team charter plane learned he would become interim athletic director, standing at the New York Stock Exchange as part of the leadup to the Panthers’ 2016 Pinstripe Bowl against
Northwestern.
With him ringing the opening bell? Pat Fitzgerald.
It’s a pairing that Guskiewicz hopes will bring a bull market back to MSU athletics and its football program. And finally bring some stability for a school that has endured a turnstile of leadership turnover the past 8½ years.
Bartholomae was introduced by Guskiewicz as the Spartans’ 22nd athletic director on Wednesday, Aug. 19, at Breslin Center. He replaces J Batt, who left for Kentucky in July.
“It’s always the right moment to come here (to MSU),” said Bartholomae, who spent the past 4½ years in Kalamazoo at WMU.
Bartholomae will get a five-year contract worth $1.3 million base salary with a $75,000 escalator annually, according to the university. His $5.1 million buyout at WMU will be covered between the $3.95 million buyout MSU is receiving from Kentucky to hire Batt, along with donor contributions to supplement the remaining portion. It is expected to be approved by MSU’s Board of Trustees during their Sept. 11 meeting.
Bartholomae received a contract extension at WMU last August that pays him more than $750,000 annually and was scheduled to run through June 30, 2031. His official start day at MSU is Aug. 31, though he arrived Monday and has been meeting with coaches, as well as university and athletic department administrators.
“It is the opportunity to elevate and energize a community of alumni and supporters around one of America’s greatest pastimes” 46-year-old Bartholomae told the crowd of staff and supporters who gathered inside the Izzo Hall of History. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime. It is a destination job. And I am incredibly grateful that you have entrusted me to deliver.”
Batt lasted a little over a year after Guskiewicz hired him away from Georgia Tech. Bartholomae was in contention for the MSU job then but remained at WMU, which had won the 2025 NCAA hockey title and would go on to win its first Mid-American Conference football title since 2016. The Broncos went 10-4 after losing to the Spartans, 23-6, on Aug. 29, 2025 – the day Bartholomae, his wife, Lauren, and their kids Dylan and Lily took the picture he showed Guskiewicz.
On Wednesday, they sat in the front row as he took the stage to receive a handshake and MSU jersey from Guskiewicz for a job Bartholomae called “a dream come true for me.”
“Any time an AD job like this is open, you’re excited about it,” Bartholomae said. “I’m not gonna lie, I was excited about it a year ago. But at the same time, it gave us all another year at Western. We did some great things, a MAC football championship. And so I’m grateful in terms of how it all worked out.”
It wasn’t the first meeting between the two Pittsburgh area natives. That happened Nov. 16, 2024, on the sidelines at MSU’s DeMartin Stadium during an NCAA women’s soccer tournament game between the Spartans and Broncos. Guskiewicz sought out Bartholomae that day to get to know him, with an eye toward a potential future partnership.
“We were very deliberate in making sure we found the right person who understands what it means lead a big-time college sports enterprise,” Guskiewicz said Wednesday. “And (one who) has the business acumen in the sense to do all the things we want to do with the stadium district and Spartan Ventures, running it like a CEO of a major corporation. But also someone who can relate to coaches and student athletes.
“There aren't a lot of them out there that can do both really well. I can guarantee you that that this guy can.”
WMU was Bartholomae's first top AD position after the Indiana graduate spent the previous five years (2017-22) as executive deputy athletic director at Oregon State. He followed his mentor Scott Barnes to OSU from Pitt, where Bartholomae spent 15 years in a variety of athletic department roles, including deputy athletic director for internal affairs, after getting his MBA from the school in 2002.
Before joining Barnes at Oregon State, Bartholomae got promoted to interim athletic director before Pitt eventually hired Heather Lyke. That’s when he and Fitzgerald first met before the Pinstripe Bowl.
It’s a unique situation that Bartholomae inherits, with a new football coach in Fitzgerald who has yet to coach a game at MSU after being hired by Batt in December. Typically, new athletic directors like to have that position filled by someone of their own choosing. But it pales in comparison to the six football coaches Pitt had during Bartholomae’s time on staff there before the Panthers hired ex-defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi away from MSU in 2015 (Narduzzi rang the NYSE bell with Bartholomae and Fitzgerald).
“I’ve been through so many football coach transitions in my life,” Bartholomae said Wednesday. “This probably appears unique on the surface, and for me, it doesn’t feel that unique. Pat was my first meeting (Tuesday). Keep in mind, we’re in the middle of (football) camp, and it was an early meeting, I assure you. But for one, that says a lot about him, that he was as excited as I was to get together and spend an hour as we learn this place together.”
Bartholomae said he and Fitzgerald reconnected again a year and a half ago in Kalamazoo, and that nascent relationship as well as his previous dealings with men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo paid benefits. He said Izzo had called him unsolicited back in early 2022, when Bartholomae took over the WMU athletic department. Bartholomae also hired Izzo’s former assistant, Dwayne Stephens, as the Broncos’ basketball coach that year before eventually firing him after last season.
“I know that maybe this is like a cliché, standard AD line. I wouldn’t have left (WMU) for another place,” Bartholomae said. “There were other opportunities that called. This place has meant something to me from the moment I walked in the door at Western. And it has a lot to do with that phone call from Tom.”
Bartholomae becomes MSU’s fourth different permanent athletic director since Mark Hollis resigned in January 2018 in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal. Guskiewicz, who nearly left for Clemson before deciding on July 6 to remain at MSU, is the school’s second full-time president (along with three interim and one acting president) since Lou Anna K. Simon’s resignation shortly before Hollis’ 8½ years ago. Fitzgerald also is the third football coach since Mark Dantonio retired after the 2019 season. Coincidentally, Dantonio’s last game was a win at the Pinstripe Bowl three years after Bartholomae met Fitzgerald there.
Re-establishing stability at MSU, Guskiewicz said, is vital. For the athletic department and the university.
“Change is difficult. And there have been a lot of changes over the past decade,” Guskiewicz said. “But the way they believe in the place – the staff believes in the place. And the way that Dan builds relationships quickly and has already done that over the past week, I think we’re gonna be in a good place. This guy is going to be here for a long time, and I think you’re going to be pleased.”
The goal now for Bartholomae and Guskiewicz – along with Fitzgerald and Izzo – is to recapture the synergy MSU had during the abundant success in the late 2000s and early 2010s. That’s when Hollis, Simon, Dantonio and Izzo delivered perhaps the most stable and productive decade in school history.
And for Bartholomae, there is one ultimate goal and mission.
“I’m competitive. It means we will compete, and we will win at the highest levels,” Bartholomae said. “And when you compete in the Big Ten conference, that means national championships.”
Michigan State athletic directors
Charles Bemies: 1899-1900.
George Denham: 1901-02.
Chester Brewer: 1903-10, 1917, 1919-21.
John Macklin: 1911-15.
George Gauthier: 1916, 1918.
Albert Barron: 1922.
Ralph Young: 1923-54.
Clarence "Biggie" Munn: 1954-72.
J. Burt Smith: 1972-75.
John D. Shingleton: 1975-76.
Joe Kearney: 1976-80.
Doug Weaver: 1980-90.
George Perles: 1990-92.
Merrily Dean Baker: 1992-95.
Merritt Norvell: 1995-99.
Clarence Underwood: 1999-2002.
Ron Mason: 2002-07.
Mark Hollis: 2007-18.
Bill Beekman: 2018-2021.
Alan Haller: 2021-May 1, 2025.
J Batt: June 13, 2025-July 10, 2026 (Jon Palumbo named interim AD).
Dan Bartholomae: Begins Aug. 31, 2026.
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dan Bartholomae: Michigan State AD position is 'destination job'
