3 Reasons Why Jonathan Smith Hire Will Work For Michigan State Football

Even the seemingly perfect hire can sometimes go awry, but here are three reasons why Michigan State football's hire of Jonathan Smith will work out well for the Spartans...

As usual, there will be several new head coaches at new programs across college football at the start of the 2024 season.

These changes have come for various reasons, whether they be a former coach retiring, moving on to the NFL or a new college football program, a coach being fired for lack of performance or, in Michigan State's case, a lack of performance on top of an embarrassing scandal.

MSU's move to hire Jonathan Smith away from Oregon State was met with almost exclusively position reviews from those in the industry, with many arguing it may have been the best hire of this past coaching cycle. With that in mind, here are three reasons why the Smith hire will work out great for MSU.

1. Smith is a proven program-builder

When Smith was hired at Oregon State in 2018 to replace Gary Anderson, his alma mater was in a tough spot, having gone 7-29 over the prior three seasons. It took a while for Smith to right the ship, as the Beavers went 2-10 in his first season, 5-7 in Year 2 and then 2-5 in the COVID-shortened 2020 season.

After that, however, Smith reeled off three straight winning seasons (7-6, 10-3, 8-4) from 2021 through 2023. That 10-win season in 2022 saw Oregon State finished with the No. 17 ranking in the country, the first time in 10 years the Beavers had finished ranked in the national polls, and their highest final ranking since finishing in the Top 5 in 2000 (when Smith started at quarterback for OSU).

It took a while for Smith to turn things around in Corvallis, but the head coach had a mostly steady upwards projectory at his alma mater.

2. Smith is an offensive coach

Being an offensive coach isn't a prerequisite for success. After all, former MSU head coach Mark Dantonio was a defensive guy and he led the Spartans to new heights in the 2010s. On the flip side, MSU's last offensive head coach — John L. Smith — was an abstract failure in East Lansing.

With that history understood, it's also important to understand the recent changes to both college football as a whole and the Big Ten. The "three yards and a cloud of dust" days are long past in this conference. MSU doesn't have the benefit of winning with just one side of the ball the way Iowa has done for the past several years.

The Spartans are still going to play a physical brand of football behind Smith and offensive coordinator Brian Lindgren, make no mistake. However, MSU fans can expect to see more creativity and just a flat-out better scheme than what they had to endure under former offensive coordinator Jay Johnson. On the other side of the ball, I rellay like Smith's hire of Joe Rossi as defensive coordinator as well. It may take time, but the Spartans should have a good balance on both sides of the ball in the years to come.

3. Smith knows how to win with less

Let's be frank here — MSU does not recruit at the level of Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State, USC and Michigan in football. That's just a fact.

Former MSU head coach Mel Tucker and his staff landed some big fish in recruiting over the past few years, but his recruiting classes lacked depth, and MSU's program lacked development. That's the opposite of what Smith and the staff he brought to East Lansing are known for.

It remains to be seen how well Smith will recruit in East Lansing. The resources he'll have access to at MSU will be vastly superior to the ones he had at Oregon State, so his staff may surprise on the trail. However, it's hard to expect MSU's classes to routinely rank in the Top 15 in recruiting.

That's not as big of a deal for Smith and Co. as it would be for other coaches however, because they have proven to be excellent developers of under-recruited guys. That's the exact formula that Dantonio used to win championships in East Lansing, and Smith is in the same mold. At Oregon State, Smith's rosters were never as star-studded as those of Oregon, USC and the other major programs of the former Pac-12, but the Beavers could still go toe-to-toe with those programs by the end of his tenure. That's what MSU needs its head football coach to be able to do in the Big Ten.

The Michigan State Spartan Football Spring Green and White Game (Spring Showcase) will be held at the High Cathedral of the Spartan Nation, Spartan Stadium, on April 20, 2024, at 2 p.m.

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