MSU presidential change alters 1st-year AD J Batt's contract status

Not even three weeks ago in Detroit, Kevin Guskiewicz and J Batt jointly delivered a state of Michigan State University’s athletic department and described their bold visions for its future.

Now, Guskiewicz is leaving East Lansing for Clemson. And it has a ripple effect into the contract of the athletic director he brought to campus not even a year ago.

A provision in the six-year, more than $12.6 million contract Batt signed last summer cuts his buyout to take another job in half with Guskiewicz no longer being MSU’s president. That means another school can attempt to poach the 44-year-old – whom Guskiewicz pried away from Georgia Tech due to their previous relationship – at half the price.

Batt's buyout drops from $5 million to $2.5 million from now until June 30, 2027. The following year, it decreases to $2 million, then $1.5 million in Year 4 of his deal and $1 million in Year 5. He does not have a buyout in his final year of his contract, which expires June 30, 2031. Batt is making $1.85 million in base pay this year, with $100,000 annual bump scheduled for July 1, and he gets raises each year of his deal up to a projected $2.35 million in the final year of the contract (2030-31).

Batt met Guskiewicz while the two were at North Carolina, when Batt was a student and member of the men’s soccer team and Guskiewicz a doctor doing concussion research. Guskiewicz, a native of Pittsburgh suburb Latrobe, eventually returned to Chapel Hill and served as chancellor at UNC from 2019-24. Batt – who grew up in Charlottesville, Va. – worked at a number of schools, including Alabama and Maryland, that all are below the Mason-Dixon Line.

“I met him as a freshman on campus at North Carolina, and we kept our relationship going for the last 25 years,” Batt said on May 8 at the Detroit Economic Club meeting. “Ultimately when he called, I always answered.”

Batt is MSU’s 21st athletic director and replaced Alan Haller, who was fired by Guskiewicz on May 1, 2025. Batt is the school’s first athletic director who was hired outside of MSU since 1995 (Merritt Norvell).

Asked why he chose to leave Georgia Tech for MSU when Guskiewicz called him last year, Batt said there were two reasons that came to mind.

“One would be opportunity, and two would be alignment … ,” he said. “In today’s college athletics environment, you cannot go it alone. It has to be aligned. So whether it’s someone you might have known or come across previously in your career, I have a lot of trust in president Guskiewicz. When he called on the other end of the phone, there was a lot to that. And so as we take on the unique challenges of college athletics today, being fully aligned with him, being fully aligned with this campus and what we’re all trying to do, ultimately that will be the key for us – everybody pulling in the same direction to reach back to the place as a top 10 athletic department.”

Some of the biggest projects for Batt and Guskiewicz in the past year have been attempting to launch Spartan Ventures to fund the athletic department and begin plans for massive Spartan Stadium renovations and creating a business district around the football venue. That would include hotels, restaurants and other private partnerships on public land in the center of MSU’s sprawling campus.

“We’re in the process of looking at that right now, with the hopes of bringing some ideas to the (Board of Trustees) in the next 4-5 montns,” Guskiewicz said May 8. “That would allow us to create something really special.”

On Spartan Ventures, a non-profit corporation which has drawn scrutiny from some of the Board of Trustees since its inception, Guskiewicz said: “I think we’ve allowed ourselves a runway to get ourselves where we need to be. The goal is early July to be fully launched. J’s gonna be able to handle this better than me, and I’m proud of it. But I’m all about process, and I think we’ve had process from Day 1 when this idea surfaced probably 10 months ago, 11 months ago, shortly after J got there. But I think we got runway left to get it right, to get the right people in place.”

Contact Chris Solari: [email protected]. Follow him @chrissolari.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MSU presidential change alters 1st-year AD J Batt's contract status