Fitzgerald talks philosophy, path to Tennessee & why he stayed with Vols

With a cup of black coffee, a granola bar and a playlist headlined by AC/DC and KISS, Craig Fitzgerald starts every morning the same way.

Barrel-chested with a thick neck and a horse voice, Tennessee’s strength and conditioning coordinator rolls into the weight room around 5 a.m. and has his own version of a pre-workout.

Literally.

Fitzgerald and the rest of the S&C staff perform the day’s lift before Tennessee’s players start to trickle in an hour later to do the same thing.

“I think that’s pretty cool,” Fitzgerald said, grinning.

“We really learn best by doing. What did I type up a month ago for this workout? So we’re training it. We’re feeling it. Maybe on this last set, you might need to take some more rest. Maybe you change the logistics. The workout gets us fired up. I know the weights aren’t close to what the guys are doing these days, but the actual, ‘I know what we’ve got today.’ I feel it. It really puts me in tune with what we’re doing that day. Rachel (Pfister) is kind enough to provide some breakfast burritos for the guys, so we choke those down and get on our way.”

Starting tomorrow, Fitzgerald becomes the most important figure surrounding Tennessee’s program, as the 46-year-old coach, along with his staff of Byron Jerideau, Michael Farrell, Shaq Wilson and AJ Artis, is effectively in charge of Jeremy Pruitt’s team over the next eight weeks.

The Vols will begin their offseason training program with the same voice, philosophy and intensity from the previous summer for the first time in five years.

That fact isn’t lost on Fitzgerald, either.

“We call this the Tennessee Strength & Conditioning Memorial Bathroom,” he joked while closing the restroom door connected to his office.

Craig Fitzgerald is equal parts mastermind and meathead.

He learned a lot early in his career by simply doing.

He played football at Maryland, started his coaching career as a volunteer at Division III Catholic University and was in charge of 41 different athletic programs in his first head strength job at Harvard.

But Fitzgerald is a good listener, too, which is how he picked up a now-core principle of small group workouts in the offseason. Tennessee's strength coordinator is charged with directing 120 players, so each day, four to six groups work with the staff for around 1.5 hours each, focusing on power lifting or speed training — i.e. translatable skills from the weight room to the field.

Fitzgerald poached the “six practices a day” idea many moons ago from famed strength coordinator Tommy Moffit, who spent four years on John Stuckey’s staff at Tennessee in the mid 90s.

“Those are Mount Rushmore guys,” Fitzgerald said of Stuckey and Moffit.

“Johnny Parker, too. They’ve all been mentors from afar. I’ll never forget hearing Tommy speak at that convention about his typical day. This is back when he was at Miami. He talked about working with 5-6 groups in the South Florida heat. Just sweating.

“I thought, ‘Man that sounds awesome.’ You’re on your feet, active. I was really intrigued. I always remember that speech, so every time I see him now I tell him, ‘You hooked me!’”

Fitzgerald’s first true break in the industry came a decade ago when, ironically, Lane Kiffin hired away Mark Smith from South Carolina to come to Tennessee.

Steve Spurrier needed a replacement, and so Fitzgerald boldly decided to give South Carolina’s coach a call. Through a contact on Carolina’s staff, he let Spurrier know he could be in Columbia that night for an interview.

“I knew Steve was going to go to the National Coaching Conference, so I went to get to him before that because everyone there was a lot more qualified than I was,” Fitzgerald said.

“We hit it off.”

As Fitzgerald headed back to Boston, he received a phone call from Spurrier.

“Do you want the job?”

“Oh, yea!” Fitzgerald remembered saying.

“Well it’s yours. Do you accept?”

“Absolutely.”

“But I haven’t even told you how much you’re going to get paid,” Spurrier responded.

“I said, ‘That’s ok coach, I’ll work for anything.’”

“Steve laughed,” Fitzgerald recalled and then said, “That’s what I love about you guys, ‘Cheap and available.’”

But that description no longer applies to Fitzgerald.

After a decade at the pinnacle of his profession, Tennessee’s coordinator is among the highest-paid strength coaches in the country now, pulling in $625,000 annually. He’s likely to receive a raise after rebuffing Maryland this offseason, too.

The paradigm shift in college football happened several years ago, but as the NCAA rules continue to limit contact with players, football strength staffs are considered more and more valuable, spending more time around the team (eight hours a week) than any other coach (two hours a week during the offseason). As such, they’re now compensated as much as many unit coordinators.

Fitzgerald, who loves doing the same back squats and power cleans as his players, essentially carries the weight of Tennessee’s program.

He is charged with dictating Pruitt’s vision. He helps curate the program’s culture. He’s a motivator. A supervisor. A scientist. All in one, just an extremely well paid one.

“The job hasn’t changed,” Fitzgerald said.

“Just the perception (of its importance).

“When I was an assistant at Maryland, the head guy was making somewhere under a $100,000. Probably around $60,000. I told my wife, ‘Man, wouldn’t it be great if we made that some day. She looked right at me and said, ‘Don’t think like that because then you won’t be able to get a job like this.’ She was absolutely right.

“We love training the guys. We can’t see ourselves doing anything else.”

Fitzgerald then told a funny story about an intern he had at South Carolina. During a mid-year evaluation, he asked him, ‘Why do you want to be a strength coach?’”

He looked right at me and said, ‘The money is outstanding.’”

We both laughed.

“The (money) really has changed,” Fitzgerald went on to add.

“But I’m glad the people I’ve circled up with are like, ‘Man we love this.’ It’s great, sure. But this is what we were doing before. Strength and conditioning is at the ground floor. We’re with the student athletes everyday. We can’t be a king to a pawn. We’re all in this together. Let’s build those relationships. … It’s a huge responsibly and one we don’t shy away from.”

Fitzgerald is a close friend of Houston Texas head coach Bill O’Brien. He went with O’Brien to Penn State and then followed him to Houston, spending four years in the NFL.

But back in early January of 2018, Fitzgerald was looking for a change. He loved working with JJ Watt, learning from Mike Vrabel and simply the quality of life in the pros. But he missed being an integral part of a program. He missed the developmental aspect of training.

“At that level, when you have them they’re great,” he said about working in the NFL.

“But you just don’t have them that much.”

While O’Brien had already told Fitzgerald he’d been retained for 2018-19 season, Fitzgerald told his buddy and boss that he had his eyes on another job.

Tennessee.

Just like he had done years earlier with the South Carolina opening, Fitzgerald made the first move.

He dialed up longtime friend and then-Alabama assistant Mike Locksley to get Pruitt’s number. He had O’Brien then give Pruitt a call as a recommendation.

Later that day, Fitzgerald went to lunch with a buddy in Houston. At the valet, out walked a guy in full Tennessee regalia.

“Head to toe,” Fitzgerald said, laughing.

“So I’m like, ‘Hey, Go Vols!’ Just having a good time. My buddy is like, ‘That’s a sign, dude. Go call coach Pruitt!’”

Fitzgerald did and Pruitt was immediately intrigued, especially after receiving strong endorsements from Locksley and O’Brien. Pulling double duty as Tennessee’s new head coach and Alabama’s defensive coordinator, Pruitt wanted to meet Fitzgerald in Atlanta the weekend of the National Championship Game.

“I took a page from the coach Spurrier situation and told him, ‘No, I’ll meet you tonight in Tuscaloosa,” Fitzgerald said.

So Fitzgerald hung up the phone, jumped on a plane from Houston to Birmingham and then had his own “SNL Cab Driver stories” when he took an Uber all the way to Tuscaloosa.

“It was kind of nutty,” Fitzgerald said.

“I’m on the phone with my agent. With Pruitt. I told the driver, ‘You got to keep your mouth shut about all this!’ But we had a good time. I sent him to Buffalo Wild Wings for two hours while with I was with Jeremy. I told him, ‘You hang out here. Lay low. I’ll pay for your meal and give you a good tip on the way back away from Uber.’ He picked me up at 3 a.m. Kid called it the best night of his life.”

Upon arriving at Tennessee, Fitzgerald was given the green light to overhaul the weight room — one that had just received new floors and equipment a year earlier.

It didn’t matter.

It was Fitzgerald’s domain now, and to push Tennessee’s players to their physical and mental limits, Fitzgerald wanted to do it his way.

Down came the minors. He changed the flooring.

He got rid of any machines and added more free weights and racks. He built a med ball wall and loaded the room with plenty of chains, heavy bags and sleds.

He changed the alignment of the facility to accommodate big or small groups.

The entire facelift cost nearly $700,000.

“How you do anything is how you do everything,” Fitzgerald said.

“It’s a holistic approach. Do we have the right equipment? Are you resting enough? Are you making good choices outside of the room? Are you taking advantage of us? The program is very simple and it’s proven to work, but what are you doing outside of here to make it happen?

“We kidded about the no pretty muscle guys and the mirrors, but really feeling your body in movement really helps. On the field, like in Olympic weight lifting, you don’t have a mirror there. You have to really feel where your depth is. In football, it’s the same thing. You can watch all the film you want, but once you play on Saturday, you have to feel how you’re doing it.”

Fitzgerald and his staff certainly have the sizzle down.

Oftentimes, he lets his staff, made up of three of his former players, do the talking in hype videos.

Move heavy weight fast! If one eats, we all eat! I never take a day off because I knew it would pay off!

But the steak is actually there, too.

Although the Vols faded down the stretch of the 2018 season due to a lack of depth, they were a bigger and faster football team than a year before.

Countless players, including a some key offensive lineman, dramatically changed their bodies.

Perhaps just as important, the team mostly avoided the cataclysmic injuries that had derailed the Vols the previous few seasons. This spring, they didn’t have a single concussion either. The expectation is that Year 2 in Fitzgerald’s program should only further help the program get back to relevancy.

Five months ago, there was legitimate concern that wouldn’t be the case, though.

When Locksley became the head coach at Maryland in January, one of his first calls was to Fitzgerald. Locksley offered him the S&C coordinator job, putting Fitzgerald in an extremely difficult position.

Locksley was a longtime friend. Fitzgerald was a Maryland alum. So was his wife. His parents live just two hours away in Philadelphia.

He wrestled with a decision for days, going over pros and cons. He kept Pruitt in the loop, but didn’t tip his hand on which way he was leaning. Still, some in the program were convinced they’d be seeking a new strength coach for the fifth straight winter.

But the night before National Signing Day, Fitzgerald had made up his mind.

“I signed up for this,” he pointed into the weight room.

“I was excited last year and I’m just as excited now. After Year 1, we haven’t even really put a dent on these kids yet. It’s fun for us, and for the kids, to know what to expect now.

“As a strength coach, you’re in the developmental business. One and done? That’s really hard to do. It is a business and I don’t fault other coaches, but as a strength coach, it’s really hard. It’s just not enough time. Coach Pruitt is on a mission. If we’re doing this together, and this (S&C) is a big part of the plan, and it really is for him, then that would not be fulfilling the goal.”

So just before 5 a.m. on NSD, Fitzgerald made his way to Pruitt’s office. He knocked on the door but saw the lights were out. So he went on in and woke Pruitt up, who was sleeping in office.

“There’s always a line outside his door, so I wanted to make sure I was there first,” Fitzgerald chuckled.

“He got right up. We had a great conversation, and then we went to work.”

Just like every other early morning.