What a week for Michigan State University and its athletic department!
In a series of announcements, MSU fired football coach Jonathan Smith, hired former Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald, revealed a $1 billion fundraising goal for the athletic department and then, on Friday, said Greg and Dawn Williams are donating $401 million to the Spartans, most of it directly to athletics.
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It’s unclear how MSU will work out the math, but with $250 million already committed to athletics by other donors, the gift from the co-founder of Acrisure and his wife put MSU past the halfway mark. The Williams’ gift earmarks $290 million for athletics, another $100 million for Spartan Ventures, the nonprofit fundraising arm of the athletic department, and $11 million for non-athletic MSU purposes.
If you aren’t familiar with the Williamses, there’s a good explanation here. Wondering how they compare to previous donations to MSU? We wrote about that too, comparing previous large donations with the record-setting gift from the Williams family.
Columnist Graham Couch has taken the time to analyze what these shifts mean for the football program and on Sunday morning, his latest column will examine how MSU can build a program that returns MSU to the success it had under former coach Mark Dantonio.
If you are an MSU fan or just invested in how the university goes about its business, these are interesting times. I hope you take the time to read some of our coverage.
Thanks again for reading.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU makes a week’s worth of headlines
