Former LSU assistant Dan Fitzgerald introduced as new KU Jayhawks baseball coach
After conducting formal interviews with “more than 10 candidates” and bringing “multiple” college assistant and head coaches to the University of Kansas campus, athletic director Travis Goff on Wednesday hired LSU assistant Dan Fitzgerald as the Jayhawks’ new baseball coach.
“There was a steadying force throughout. There was this confidence, this connection, this alignment that showed itself from ‘interaction one’ all the way to the finish line and it’s only been heightened today with having Dan and his family here,” Goff said Thursday at a news conference on KU’s campus introducing the 44-year-old Fitzgerald as replacement for Ritch Price, who recently resigned after 20 years in the KU dugout.
“Through the calls (and) the investigative work we conducted we heard his name over and over: tireless recruiter, developer of men on and off the field, somebody who knows the game in a special manner, somebody who truly is about young people in his program and people in the community,” Goff added.
Fitzgerald — he spent one season at LSU as assistant baseball coach/recruiting coordinator and nine seasons before that as associate head coach/recruiting coordinator at Dallas Baptist — signed a six-year contract. Salary figures have not yet been disclosed.
In Fitzgerald, Goff has turned over KU’s baseball program to a coach well known in the college baseball world. In a survey of 90 head coaches conducted by Baseball America in 2020, Fitzgerald was ranked No. 7 on a list of assistant coaches from across the country predicted to one day make the best head coach.
Baseball America also rated Fitzgerald as the No. 7 assistant coach in the country in 2018, and D1Baseball ranked him as the 17th-best recruiter in the country in 2016.
“Dan could have been a head coach all over this country six years ago. Dan has been a name talked about in head coaching searches for years,” Goff said. “Dan hasn’t really gone out and campaigned (for head coaching jobs). The confidence and humility ... to know he’s going to go on his journey, do it the right way and the right opportunity is going to present itself.”
Patient through the years, Fitzgerald was quick to pursue the KU job opening at this time in his life.
“Why KU? It checked every box — the people, the institution, the location,” Fitzgerald said. “I really identify as a builder. I want to build. I want to be a part of something special for a really, really long time. And I want some place to be home.”
Fitzgerald has also served as the head coach at Des Moines Area Community College and as an assistant coach at Northern Iowa Community College and Flagler College. He was a volunteer assistant at the University of Iowa.
As somebody who has covered a lot of ground recruiting baseball players during his career, he believes he’ll be able to attract talented recruits to KU.
“I spent a lot of time north of here and I spent a lot of time south of here. I’ve been on every exit off I-35 from Duluth, Minnesota to South Texas,” he said.
“Someone asked me if I’ve spent much time in Lawrence and I haven’t. It’s because there’s not a junior college here (to recruit players). Every other town in Kansas I’ve spent significant time. I’ve been in all of them. It starts from the inside out,” he noted of his recruiting philosophy. “If there’s a player that lives a mile from campus, he needs to be a Jayhawk. And then we move out from there: five miles, 10 miles, 100 miles, 200. That’s not to say that we won’t have players from a continued pipeline of players that have come before to Kansas.
“I think recruiting is really simple, finding people that can come in and get on board with where we’re headed, and then us giving them a really clear picture of, ‘Here is who we think you are and here’s how we can do this together.’ I think that is a great recipe and we’ll get going. We already started on that. We’ve spent a lot of time on the phone last few days (with prospects).”
He said he is in the process not only of recruiting players, but putting together a coaching staff.
A native of Edina, Minnesota, Fitzgerald played baseball at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin-River Falls before graduating with a degree in English from the University of Minnesota in 2000. He earned a masters in kinesiology from Dallas Baptist in 2016.
Fitzgerald and his wife, Kelly, have three sons: Will, Max and Ben.
“We started saying ‘Rock Chalk’ real fast,” Fitzgerald said. “We had to look it up on Wikipedia to figure out what it meant, but we have a firm understanding of Rock Chalk now. I think I’ve received a text or a call from I think probably every employee at the university, which is a little overwhelming.”
This story was originally published June 16, 2022 at 5:59 PM.
