Michigan State football fans are simply down bad this season. They watched as a promising start quickly faded away, starting with a loss to USC and that spiraled into defeats at Nebraska and, shockingly, at home against a 1-4 UCLA team.
This meltdown, which is now an eight-game losing streak, has caused fans to completely turn on Jonathan Smith despite him only being in his second year.
In the age of NIL and the transfer portal, quicker turnarounds are expected at major programs like Michigan State, and going from 5-7 to potentially 3-9 in one year just isn’t going to cut it. We’ve seen other head coaches fired for less.
Since Smith has been planted on the hot seat, Michigan State fans have been creating lists of potential replacements for him. A couple of the top candidates to replace Smith have already been hired elsewhere as James Franklin and Alex Golesh are officially off the market. It felt like Michigan State could have made a run at one or both of them, but J Batt’s decision to keep Smith’s job security under wraps has led to a shrinking candidate pool.
Other names have been floated around, but none have matched Franklin or Golesh in terms of desire to have them in East Lansing. However, there’s one under-the-radar coach who I think would do really well at Michigan State: Jason Eck.
OK, I know that he’s only been at New Mexico for one season, but what he’s done in such a short period of time deserves some recognition.
Eck took over a New Mexico program that hadn’t made a bowl game since 2016 and has just two postseason berths since 2008 and immediately led the Lobos to a bowl. The Lobos have been one of the worst teams in the Group of Five for almost two decades now, but Eck immediately turned things around and has New Mexico in a prime spot to make the Mountain West title game. For reference, New Mexico hasn’t won a conference title since it was in the WAC back in 1964.
Still concerned? I get it. He’s good Group of Five head coach, so why would he be Big Ten-bound after just one season? Well, he turned around a program that was on life support in his first season and has it knocking on the door of its first conference title in 60 years. Plus, he’s a Midwest guy and Wisconsin alum, so he knows the Big Ten and probably wants to return home.
There was talk about Wisconsin making a run at him, and the Badgers probably should have instead of retaining Luke Fickell, but that opens the door for Michigan State to take a serious look at Eck.
My only concern? The last time Michigan State hired a Wisconsin alum (Mel Tucker), it didn’t go so well. Plus, Eck was the head coach of Idaho before New Mexico, and the last time Michigan State hired a former Vandal head coach (John L. Smith), it also went poorly.
But hey, the results speak for themselves.