A year ago, it felt like Jonathan Smith was making progress within the Michigan State football program. He maneuvered through a tough stretch of games against the likes of Ohio State and Oregon, and still managed to keep his team together to beat Iowa at the end of October.
In years past, the team might have just mailed it in after losing a handful of games in a row following a 3-0 start. However, Smith did a good job of keeping his players level-headed.
Fast forward to 2025, and Smith’s team feels like it’s in shambles again. The Spartans raced out to a 3-0 start before losing at USC, then at Nebraska, and then concluding that horrific stretch with a home loss to 1-4 UCLA by 25 points. This feels like rock-bottom.
Making matters worse, the Spartans now head to Indiana on Saturday to face arguably the hottest team in the nation following a huge road upset of No. 3 Oregon.
Not good.
This has all the makings of one of those blowout games that we’ve seen over the years following the golden age of Mark Dantonio. Heck, we even saw it in the latter years of Dantonio. The Spartans knew they were going to lose these big games, and they didn’t even hide the fact that they didn’t even given themselves a shot. It feels like Saturday’s game is headed in that same direction.
This time, however, it may cost Smith his job.
Earlier this week, Graham Couch of the Lansing State Journal said that a horrible showing at Indiana on Saturday could end Smith’s career at Michigan State, even though Michigan is next.
What kind of horrible showing are we talking about? I would say somewhere in the vicinity of a 49-7 blowout or something similar. Anything where it feels like Michigan State never had a chance. Basically, if what we expect to happen actually happens, Smith could be out of a job.
Fans want him gone after last weekend’s debacle on homecoming against UCLA, and a blowout at Indiana could just expedite that process.
You never really want to fire a coach in the middle of a season, especially with a rivalry game coming up, but Smith has forced the hand of new athletic director J Batt.
A bad outing in Bloomington could be the end of Smith at MSU.