EAST LANSING – Pat Fitzgerald proudly carried the Paul Bunyan Trophy off the bus when Michigan State football returned from Ann Arbor victorious Saturday night, taking it right to the crowd of students who’d gathered outside the Duffy Daugherty Football Building.On Wednesday, the Spartans’ first-year coach and his new athletic director took it to the people.Fitzgerald and Dan Bartholomae left his radio show at a local establishment on the north side of East Lansing and went to the bars and restaurants downtown. They promised throughout the day to meet the people where they celebrate, and they delivered.The Riv. El Azteco. FieldHouse. All along MAC Avenue and Albert Street. They were hailed as heroes with cheers and chants, stopping for pictures and giving high-fives. The 15-6 win at Michigan was still fresh, four days later, and will be for years. That’s what a rivalry victory will do.Just ask Jalen Watts Jackson or T.J. Duckett or Eddie Brown. Or Mark Dantonio and his eight wins over the Wovlerines, for that matter.SCOUTING THE REBOUND: Michigan State fighting to go bowlingBut what Fizgerald and Bartholomae did Wednesday night, trying to energize and cajole the students to get ensure they will be in the stands for MSU’s game against Washington on Saturday, Nov. 14 (pushed back to 5:30 p.m., Big Ten Network) might go down in deeper lore within the school and alumni base.It will be remembered much like the night that Tiger Woods, Hootie and the Blowfish and the Stanley Cup all ended up downstairs at Rick’s American Café in the summer of 1995. Because Fitzgerald took what Dantonio and Kirk Cousins said metaphorically and made it literal: “You’re either gonna walk the streets or walk the alleys,” Dantonio said in 2009 before his Spartans won their second of four straight against the Wolverines.Fitzgerald walked the streets Wednesday night not as an outsider, even though for almost all of his life he had been the face of Northwestern football. The 51-year-old beamed with pride, his boss by his side, as MSU basked in its biggest win in five years to snap a four-game skid in the rivalry and a six-game losing streak in Fitzgerald’s debut season.It was a weight released, for him and his supporters. And an opportunity for Fitzgerald to take to the streets and show his faithful what his players have seen all season to allow them to fight through massive amounts of injuries and adversity.“I just love the school,” defensive end Anelu Lafaele said Wednesday. “And just talking to coach Fitz and the culture he wants to build around here, I loved the intensity he brought.”U-M coach Kyle Whittingham arguably didn’t quite understand how much this rivalry meant to MSU fans and players when he pointed to it as the Spartans’ Super Bowl and not his program’s. Jonathan Smith, despite having played and coached at an underdog Oregon State program that had similar feelings about Oregon, didn’t quite grasp that either in his two seasons w
