EAST LANSING – Pat Fitzgerald poked his head into Michigan State football’s team meeting room, his jacket still dripping from the rains blowing through campus outside.
He was grinning ear to ear, a coach who knew lessons were taught in the elements Tuesday, Sept. 15, that couldn’t otherwise be learned or scripted. And Fitzgerald’s players embraced every snap and every drop of the downpour as they hooted and hollered through practice.
“I think it’s huge,” quarterback Alessio Milivojevic said after drying off. “I think it was a really fun day out there. I think the guys loved it. Obviously the rain was coming down, dudes were soaked. But it was awesome.
“I think it helps you kind of prepare because you don’t get rain days every day.”
The early week
forecast for Saturday’s game in South Bend, Indiana, calls for a 75% chance of precipitation and a good chance of rain around 7:30 p.m. when the Spartans (2-0) face the first major test of Fitzgerald’s nascent tenure against No. 3 Notre Dame (2-0).
And while almost all of the faces have changed in both programs, the Tuesday morning slogfest evoked memories of a game 20 years earlier against the Irish across the street from the football facility. MSU blew a 17-point halftime lead as strong storms hit Spartan Stadium and the Irish rallied for a 40-37 victory on Sept. 23, 2006.
Fitzgerald spent part of Monday and Tuesday getting his players – a number of whom weren’t born when that collapse happened – about the rivalry that rekindles for the first time since 2017. But getting a chance to simulate real situations in heavy rains and winds also isn’t something that can be taught with a history lesson.
“Coach does a great job of that. He’s obviously in tuned with the conditions of the game, and we just do that for the preparation of the team,” offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan said Tuesday. “Because you just don’t know when those days are gonna come – sometimes, you know that there’s gonna be weather the day of the game, but maybe the week during prep isn’t that way. So we just try to take advantage of that.”
It was at least the second time in a little more than a week that MSU took practice outside of the cozy sterility of its indoor practice facility and onto the grass fields. After opening with a 30-20 win over Toledo on Sept. 4, the Spartans got some work outside five days later heading into Saturday’s 35-7 win over Eastern Michigan. The forecast changed late last week, and Spartan Stadium stayed dry on an impeccable day for football against the Eagles.
Yet last Wednesday was an invaluable chance for Fitzgerald to test his players in the wetness. And they got another test Tuesday to hone their focus and footing in difficult conditions.
“When it starts to rain and it’s a little windy, it’s a little quote-unquote distracting,” defensive coordinator Joe Rossi said on Sept. 9.” So to be able to get out there and be in the elements and have to communicate and deal with a slick ball and put your hands on a slick ball carrier, I think it’s positive. … It’s just banked reps, because at some point during the season, we’ll get a game like that.”
Sheridan and Milivojevic said the team will wet footballs during summer workouts and preseason practices to somewhat acclimate to potential weather-affected situations, particularly for quarterbacks to work on their grip and ball security in case of rain. Another seldom-discussed benefit of being outside on the practice field is the ability for players to switch out their cleats to ones that give better traction on wet surfaces. Notre Dame Stadium switched from its once-immaculate grass field to FieldTurf back in 2014.
“I think they did a great job today keeping their feet under themselves,” Milivojevic said. “Because obviously when it’s wet, if you overstep, it’s a lot easier to slip.”
The Spartans haven’t played in South Bend in 10 years, a 38-18 Week 2 road victory in a fall that fell apart with a 3-9 finish after that, Mark Dantonio’s worst season in his 13 seasons. MSU is 13-29 at Notre Dame Stadium, but Fitzgerald won his only trip there as a coach at Northwestern in 2014 and also pulled off another major upset road win as a player in 1995.
A year after the collapse in the rain in East Lansing, which led to the end of the John L. Smith era, Dantonio took his first team into South Bend and delivered a 31-14 victory despite the Irish being an 8½-point favorite. The Spartans return there in Fitzgerald’s first season a 29½-point underdog, looking for every possible edge to reclaim the Megaphone Trophy they lost in the last meeting (2017) against a Notre Dame team that played for a national title two years ago.
How does Fitzgerald get his players to believe that they, too, can pull off a potentially program trajectory-changing upset?
“Preparation,” he said Monday. “You gotta prepare the right way.”
Sometimes, that means getting a little wet in the process.
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Rainy game vs Notre Dame? Michigan State may have to concur old demons
