Jonathan Smith knocked official visit season out of the park earlier this summer as Michigan State football went from having just four commitments to having over 20 in the span of a month.
The second-year Michigan State head coach knew he had to put in some work to turn the 2026 class around, and he did just that. Whatever he did on his official visits seemed to work as over a dozen targets committed to the Spartans.
So what does an official visit look like, and why was it so effective for Smith and Co. in June?
Luckily for us, Spartans Illustrated was able to find three-star cornerback commit TJ Umenyiora's TikTok account where he shared a behind-the-scenes look at a Michigan State official visit.
ICYMI on his TikTok account, here is a behind-the-scenes look at TJ Umenyiora's visit to MSU in June, before he committed to be a Spartan: pic.twitter.com/rYDzC1UHVy
— Spartans Illustrated (@Spartans_Illo) August 5, 2025
After a quick flight, a Michigan State assistant picked Umenyiora up from the airport. He then checked into his hotel where the room was set up with cool recruiting swag, and then he headed to campus for a facility tour. He showed what the official visit setup looks like, and then he showed a campus tour, academic meetings, recruiting talks, he signed the rock in the middle of campus, and then he had a photoshoot.
All of this actually led to Umenyiora's commitment to the Spartans on June 14, just eight days after he took the official visit. Clearly, this schedule and all the tours and behind-the-scenes looks into the program worked on the three-star cornerback from Georgia.
While there was surely more to the visit than what we saw from Umenyiora's TikTok, it's cool to see what goes on during official visit weekends.
Hopefully more recruits share these behind-the-scenes looks. I'd be interested to see how MSU's compare to the rest of the country.