Path forward with Jonathan Smith's future complex for Michigan State football, AD J Batt
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It was a tough question, one that didn’t take Jonathan Smith long to answer.
“Going back to November 2023 when you take the job here until now,” a reporter asked Saturday, Nov. 1., “how would you assess your performance as head coach” of Michigan State football?
“I mean, look, not good enough,” Smith replied after a 23-20 overtime loss to Minnesota. “You look at the win-loss record, we’re trying to win more than we lose. And we’re not doing that.”
It was a succinct summation of his 21 games since taking over a program coming out of the ruins that Mel Tucker left in his wake. But the state of the Spartans – now a decade removed from their last Big Ten title and only College Football Playoff berth – has been a state of decline since their loss to Alabama.
Sure, there have been blips. The 10-win 2017 season that looked like a Mark Dantonio renaissance, but one that ultimately was more of a dead-cat bounce before his retirement two seasons later. The 11-win season in 2021 under Tucker that proved to be a Kenneth Walker III-induced mirage (and give credit to William Peagler for the discovery of Walker from Wake Forest in the first place).
Even with those two high-water mark years under Smith’s predecessors, MSU is 57-59 in the 10 seasons since Dantonio lost to one of his mentors (coach Nick Saban) and the Crimson Tide in the CFP. The Spartans are a dismal 34-51 in Big Ten play during that time, with unproductive offensive line play the constant throughout. To say the current state of the program is solely on Smith is disingenuous. And wrong.
That doesn’t give the second-year coach immunity for in-game decisions that haven’t helped his 8-13 start to his MSU tenure. Nor does it take into account the complete 180 in the sport since the last time the Spartans went to a bowl game – a Peach Bowl win to close 2021 – that Tucker helped create with that team. While Tucker’s legacy always will be sullied by what happened off the field to lead to his firing, what he did in using the portal to rebuild his roster in his first offseason provided the blueprint for what has happened since around college football.
Tucker’s moves to broom players out of the program – but far more so because of the coaches around the country who took that many steps farther with wholesale roster turnover – also led to players weaponizing the portal for contract negotiations in NIL matters. Which is an interesting footnote to MSU now struggling to navigate those turbulent waters it helped create.
The shift to the revenue sharing era is ahead for new athletic director in J Batt, whose Friday announcement of the nebulously described “Spartan Ventures” is meant to help cull donor dollars into a more streamlined (and more lucrative, Batt hopes) flow of cash to acquire talent for his programs. Let’s call it what it is, even if the NCAA won’t: Player payroll procurement.
Which brings us back to Smith and the current state of MSU football.
The 46-year-old California native and former Oregon State quarterback and coach is 3-12 in Big Ten play. The talent gap for the Spartans to once again compete for league and national titles is clear, and it starts in the trenches.
In the past two seasons against Big Ten opponents, MSU has given up 55 sacks while registering 14. The Spartans’ offense has committed 17 turnovers, but their defense has generated 10 takeaways in those 15 conference games. Most critically: They’ve been outscored 493-281, a more than two touchdown-per-game differential.
While the case to make a change is strong solely based on the stats, the optics of moving on from a coach after just two seasons – even if he was hired before Batt took over as athletic director and Kevin Guskiewicz was hired as MSU’s president – still will have an effect on a potential candidate pool. Agents talk, and friction within MSU’s donor base and how it affected Smith’s on-field product will be discussed and might turn off premium coaching options, especially with the amount of high-profile jobs that already have come open in the power conferences.
Then there is the cost of buying out Smith, which would be around $34 million after this month, or 85% of the remaining seven-year, $53 million contract he signed in December 2023. Add in buying out assistant coach contracts that aren’t expiring, along with paying for a potential replacement and his staff to leave another job. Don’t forget that MSU also is being sued in federal court for nearly $80 million by Tucker, whom the university fired for cause after an inappropriate phone call to a sexual assault survivor and victim’s rights advocate. While it appears the school should be on firm ground legally, it also is out of its hands for adjudication and can’t be fully written off until a decision is rendered or if MSU and Tucker reach an out-of-court settlement.
It’s all a complicated and nuanced situation beyond football.
But football is what ultimately makes these decisions, and the Spartans have lost seven straight Big Ten games and all six to league foes during its current losing streak. After going 3-9 a year ago in conference action, Smith could become just the second coach in MSU history to go winless since it joined the Big Ten in 1953.
The other? Duffy Daugherty went 0-5-1 in 1958 conference play. After winning two national titles, with two more ahead of him. Times and circumstances have changed, as has the money involved.
What Batt and Guskiewicz will do, and if they’ll make their call together or adhere to what the donors and fans demand, remains to be seen. MSU has not had an athletic director and president from outside the university ecosystem serve together in nearly 50 years. These decisions will shape the legacy of both, as history has shown.
As for Smith, he and his staff appear honest and steady. Just see his frank self-assessment, which could be viewed as detrimental to his future – though he didn’t call himself “a horse (expletive) football coach” like his predecessor.
But as Smith and his players all have said, it’s a binary game in which two stats matter most – wins and losses. It’s the determining factor of competition and job security.
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football: Jonathan Smith’s future a complex situation
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