CHICAGO – Alessio Milivojevic confidently strode across the stage and sat down on the dais, snappily dressed in a dark-colored pinstripe suit that blended into the black table cloth and microphone in front of him.
Any nervousness that he showed last fall as a redshirt freshman who was thrust into the Michigan State football quarterback job also faded with every answer to every question at Big Ten media day. He knows now he is the starter and face of the program going into Pat Fitzgerald's first season, and Milivojevic's comfort at the podium came from advice he got recently from his new coach.
"I think it's just being yourself at the end of the day," Milivojevic said last week. "I'm just coming up here talking as if I was talking to one of my best friends right now."
As the Spartans prepare to open preseason camp on Thursday, Aug. 6, Milivojevic and his 104 teammates will spend the next month building their bonds inside the walls of Case Hall. That's where they will be living when they are not across Chestnut Road at the football complex working toward Fitzgerald's debut game against Toledo on Friday night, Sept. 4, across Shaw Lane at Spartan Stadium.
Fitzgerald, a former All-American and College Football Hall of Fame linebacker who spent 17 seasons as head coach at his alma mater Northwestern, flashed back to his days in high school and college. He brought back the tradition of putting the Spartans in the dorms for camp because of the friendships and connections he cultivated as a player and watched as a coach before being dubiously dispatched by Northwestern before the 2023 season.
#northwestern
Any nervousness that he showed last fall as a redshirt freshman who was thrust into the Michigan State football quarterback job also faded with every answer to every question at Big Ten media day. He knows now he is the starter and face of the program going into Pat Fitzgerald's first season, and Milivojevic's comfort at the podium came from advice he got recently from his new coach.
"I think it's just being yourself at the end of the day," Milivojevic said last week. "I'm just coming up here talking as if I was talking to one of my best friends right now."
As the Spartans prepare to open preseason camp on Thursday, Aug. 6, Milivojevic and his 104 teammates will spend the next month building their bonds inside the walls of Case Hall. That's where they will be living when they are not across Chestnut Road at the football complex working toward Fitzgerald's debut game against Toledo on Friday night, Sept. 4, across Shaw Lane at Spartan Stadium.
Fitzgerald, a former All-American and College Football Hall of Fame linebacker who spent 17 seasons as head coach at his alma mater Northwestern, flashed back to his days in high school and college. He brought back the tradition of putting the Spartans in the dorms for camp because of the friendships and connections he cultivated as a player and watched as a coach before being dubiously dispatched by Northwestern before the 2023 season.
#northwestern
2 months ago
