Michigan State fires football coach Jonathan Smith after less than 2 years
Michigan State has fired football coach Jonathan Smith less than two years after he was hired.
The move was made Sunday by athletic director J Batt, who has been on campus since June.
The Spartans lost eight of their last nine games to finish 4-8. Smith's overall record at MSU was 9-15 and just 4-14 in the Big Ten. Smith is due more than $30 million, according to terms of his seven-year contract, and the school will have to spend many millions to find a replacement. The Spartans aren't the only ones looking for a winning coach, either.
Smith was 34-35 over six seasons at Oregon State, winning at least eight games in consecutive seasons for the first time in more than a decade at his alma mater. He went 5-7 overall and 3-6 in the Big Ten during his debut season last year. His seat got warm when athletic director Alan Haller, who hired him, left the school last May.
A source familiar with the situation told the Associated Press on Sunday afternoon that Michigan State is planning to hire former Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald to lead its football program.
The 50-year-old Fitzgerald reached a settlement with Northwestern in August, two years after he sued the university amid a team hazing scandal that led to his firing following an investigation. Details of the settlement were not made public. He was 110-101 in 17 seasons as Northwestern's head coach.
Expectations were low for the Spartans this season and the results were worse.
The Spartans followed up wins against Western Michigan, Boston College and Youngstown State with an 0-8 start in Big Ten play. They lost to USC, Nebraska, UCLA, Indiana and Michigan by double digits before blowing a late lead and losing at Minnesota by three points in overtime. The only league win came Saturday against Maryland.
Smith benched quarterback Aidan Chiles, who followed him from Oregon State, against the Golden Gophers and gave redshirt freshman Alessio Milivojevic a shot to start perhaps with an eye toward the future the coach no longer has at Michigan State.
The program has struggled since the school's winningest coach, Mark Dantonio, retired and ended a record-breaking, 13-year run with consecutive 7-6 seasons and a .500 Big Ten record over two years.
With limited choices in the winter of 2020, inexperienced athletic director Bill Beekman hired Mel Tucker after he went 5-7 in one season at Colorado and had ties to the school as a graduate assistant under Nick Saban
Tucker led the Spartans to an 11-2 record in 2021 and the school rewarded him with a $95 million, 10-year contract. The school fired him cause early in the 2023 season after he said he had consensual phone sex with an activist and rape survivor.
Michigan State does not have a scandal to recover from during its latest attempt to fix its program, but it faces a big challenge to find someone who can win consistently in the expanded and highly competitive Big Ten.