Will MSU fire Jonathan Smith on Sunday? Where things stand after Minnesota loss

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At what point can we say "enough is enough"? Well, maybe not "we" as in myself and most of you reading this article, but Michigan State Athletic Director J Batt and the donors — that's the question I'm here to answer.

For the sixth time in the last seven weeks, Michigan State has lost a football game on Saturday. And once again, I'm here to assess whether or not head coach Jonathan Smith's key card is going to work at the football facility on Sunday. This time, I think we may actually see a change.

Michigan State lost a heart breaker at Minnesota on Saturday, blowing a late lead and eventually losing in overtime. The refs, yet again, didn't help the Spartans or Smith, but there was some poor coaching and play earlier in the game that also led to the tough defeat to the Golden Gophers.

Now, Michigan State is heading into a bye week with a record of 3-6 overall and needing to win out to reach bowl eligibility. So, I'm back again to assess the status of Smith and whether or not he'll be coaching the Spartans for their next game. Let's see what I think below…

Thoughts on Saturday's performance

Michigan State looked like a competent and winning football team on Saturday. It wasn't pretty, but they played well enough to win. They really should have won.

Smith made the decision to switch to backup quarterback Alessio Milivojevic and it paid because he was great. When he wasn't being sacked, he was making winning plays — throwing for over 300 yards, one touchdown and no interceptions.

But what killed the Spartans again falls on coaching — bad penalties and bad special teams. Not to mention that the Spartans got screwed again by the Big Ten officials, which I'm starting to think is related to Smith's personality on the sidelines. The pass interference overturn in overtime was so outrageous that I can confidently say a coach with more emotion on the sideline wouldn't have had that flipped against him. Is that fair to say? Maybe not, but that's how I feel after back-to-back weeks where Michigan State was on the wrong end of game-changing calls.

Ultimately, with the loss today, the season is over. Sure, they can win out to reach a bowl game but the odds of that happening are so low that I'm not even going to entertain that thought.

Where things overall stand with Smith

Yet another Big Ten loss and another reason to move on from Smith.

The Spartans have played well in five of their six conference losses, but the regression from last season is apparent and you just can't have that happen in a rebuild. Combine that with the fanbase (and I believe donors too) not backing Smith, and there feels like no way of saving this thing.

Predicting Smith's future at Michigan State

The Golden Gophers buried Smith on Saturday evening.

I felt last week was Smith's last chance to save his job, but after further thought I saw a path to retaining employment should he win this game at Minnesota. And I felt he would win this week, I predicted the win and late in the game I was ready to shelve this article for a few more weeks. But nope, here we are. Here we are knowing what needs to happen and having an exact answer now of Smith's future and just guessing whether it's coming on Sunday (or maybe Monday) or in December.

My prediction: Smith is fired on Sunday or Monday. I said about a month ago now that following the loss at Minnesota heading into a bye would be the time to pull the trigger. So here we are and here is where I'll plant my flag.

If it doesn't happen by end of day on Monday, then I don't think it'll happen until late November at the earliest. I think it should happen now, but we will see over the next few days.

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This article originally appeared on Spartans Wire: Will MSU fire Jonathan Smith on Sunday? Where things stand after Minnesota loss

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