Michigan State football gets its guy but college football offers no guarantees

Michigan State football was able to land its top option but unfortunately, college football offers no guarantees.

It’s official. One of the longest coaching searches in recent memory came to a close on Saturday. Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith is set to become the 26th head coach of Michigan State football. He leaves Corvallis with a 34-35 record across six seasons. Smith rescued a Beavers program that was in the cellar of the Pac-12. Oregon State went from 2-10 in his first season to 10-3 in 2022 and 8-4 in 2023. Regarded as one of the most difficult jobs in Power Five, Smith kept Oregon State in contention in what many deemed as the best conference in the country in 2023.

This is not a good hire for Michigan State. This is a great hire.

There’s no other way to look at it. Anyone that says otherwise is doing so just to be a contrarian.

Allan Haller and the Michigan State brass landed their top target in an efficient, timely, and seamless manner. Smith’s resume speaks for itself. He was always going to have tremendous interest from any school looking for a new coach. His situation was complicated by the fact that he played at Oregon State. In the end, it didn’t matter. Michigan State lured a top candidate away from his alma mater in just a matter of hours after the season concluded. Impressive.

When you consider where Michigan State is as a program, the other candidates that were available, and the length of time that MSU had to find a new coach, it’s impossible to imagine a world where MSU could have done any better. Michigan State may have had the worst team in the Big Ten. This was not a coaching cycle that presented a lot of obvious candidates. In a search that lasts this long, it can be difficult to manage the opinions and demands of influential people within the university. But just a day after their season ended, Michigan State already has a new path forward.

In a conference that has prioritized defense, Michigan State has chosen to zig when everyone else is zagging. From the very top with Michigan and Ohio State to the middle with Iowa and Wisconsin to the bottom with Purdue and Illinois, the Big Ten is all about defense. It’s full of teams with defensive head coaches and offenses that struggle to score. Michigan State football will attempt to be the outlier. It’s a smart strategy when you consider the offensive resurgence seen in other parts of the country.

Michigan State will always be at a recruiting disadvantage when compared to the teams they’re competing against. Ohio State, Michigan, and USC will always offer more than what Michigan State can provide. But Jonathan Smith has shown he can level that playing field as well. The discrepancy between recruiting to Oregon State and the rest of the Pac-12 is far greater than what he’ll experience in East Lansing. Smith’s background as an underdog at a school like Oregon State will match perfectly with what he’ll need at Michigan State to close that gap with the elite programs.

But while this is a tremendous hire, it’s not a “home run” hire because there are no guarantees in college football. We’ve seen countless “home run” hires in November and December flame out. Scott Frost at Nebraska. Tom Herman at Texas. Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M. The internet age has forced people to come to grand conclusions in a matter of moments. I’m not going to do that. I have no idea if this will work. But I do know that as we sit here today, this hire makes all the sense in the world.

Michigan State fans are deservedly excited to turn the page into the next chapter of Spartan football. As is the case with any new hire, it’s not going to be a quick fix. Michigan State was outscored 129-3 by the teams they feel like they should be competing against. The Spartans dressed fewer than 50 scholarship players in their final game against Penn State. UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington are going to make the Big Ten even more difficult. Smith will be dealing with a new set of expectations with a fan base that he doesn’t know. He’ll be coaching in a part of the country where he hasn’t before in a league that he’s only partly familiar with. There are plenty of questions that are left to answer.

But as we sit here today, knowing what we know about where things were headed under Mel Tucker, there’s no reason to be pessimistic. Penn State was beaten soundly by Michigan and Ohio State. That Penn State team just held Michigan State to 53 total yards. This was the most unpleasant year of Spartan football that I can remember. But the night is darkest just before dawn. On this gloomy, cold, Saturday in late November, it feels as if the sun is shining again on Michigan State football.