Futility and a lack of excitement
Those are the two feelings I’m left with at the end of the season. Going into it, I thought the Spartans could be a 7-5 team and, with a few more plays against Boston College and Michigan, they would have been.
In the summer, I didn’t think the Spartans would go into Ann Arbor and win but I did think, with all of Michigan’s roster and coaching losses from last year, that it would be a competitive game. I was hoping the Spartans could stay within a few touchdowns of Ohio State and Oregon and at least look better than the complete blowouts suffered at the hands of OSU over the last several years. And while I didn’t think they would win every other game, I did think MSU would be more or less equal to teams like Maryland, Boston College, Iowa, Illinois, Rutgers, and Indiana – no one saw that coming from the Hoosiers this year. Mine certainly was not a radical take, seemed to be in line with much of the fanbase, and generally, that’s what was happening until we got to November.
Put another way, except for OSU and Oregon, I was looking for a 2007 type of season, Mark Dantonio’s first at MSU. That team started out 4-0, with a win at Notre Dame, before going 3-5 in conference games and falling to Boston College in the Champs Sports Bowl. But every game was exciting. Every loss was within one score. The biggest margin of defeat? By 7 against both Ohio State and Northwestern, in overtime. MSU led Michigan by 10 that year before two late touchdowns brought the Wolverines back.
Of course that led to the “pride comes the fall” press conference that perhaps started, or continued, to endear Dantonio to the fanbase. I remember my mom, an MSU alum and former longtime season ticket holder, calling me that week and saying “we have a really good coach now who will stand up to Michigan.”
It just doesn’t feel the same now at the end of Jonathan Smith’s first season.
It’s not so much the 5-7 record although, as Steve noted , it’s hard to believe this team could only produce one more victory than last year’s squad, even with a pretty tough schedule.
It’s more about how they lost, especially after the Michigan game. There was so much hope coming out of the Iowa game and many thought the Spartans might actually go into Ann Arbor and beat the Wolverines convincingly. Obviously that didn’t happen and then the season ended with a 1-3 record in November, with the only victory coming in a nail biter against lowly Purdue. Even last year’s team managed to go 2-2 in the last month of the season.
This year, there were brief moments of hope including going up 10-0 on Indiana, the first half against Purdue, and the first drive against Rutgers. But everything else just reminded me of the futility of last year’s team. In both cases, it just seemed like there was no hope of the Spartans ever responding to adversity or making a play when they really needed one. The snowball started rolling into an avalanche and crushed the Spartans in November this year, just like it did for almost all of 2023.
This is made even worse by a couple of things.
First, there is the immediate success of programs like Arizona State (with former Spartan QB Sam Leavitt) and Indiana, both with first-year head coaches. It will be interesting to see if and how this immediate success is sustained at those programs. I haven’t looked deeply into it, but I think Kenny Dillingham at ASU could be set up to regularly compete in the Big 12. For Curt Cignetti at Indiana, it might depend on what happens at quarterback for the Hoosiers next year. He had a near Kenneth Walker-like portal player in Kurtis Rourke this year but he won’t be there for IU next year. Now, however, both of those programs with first year head coaches and coming off abysmal 2023 campaigns are alive and well for a spot in the college football playoff.
If ASU and Indiana can have immediate success, why can’t Smith and Michigan State? Of course, injuries in the secondary and offensive line and pre-season attrition on the defensive line hurt MSU this year but is that the only reason? I think Spartan fans would probably view their program as at least equal to, if not a couple steps above ASU and Indiana historically, so the way this season has gone for these three programs is naturally going to cast some doubt on Smith and his staff.
This brings up the second point: that there is no buzz or excitement around Smith’s program. Instead, feelings may range from apathy to angst or even dread.
The Spartans, meaning primarily Aidan Chiles, did cut down on their turnovers as the season progressed but it’s hard to see consistent on-field improvement after the Iowa game. There has to be a product on the field that provides entertainment, excitement, and hope. Unfortunately, like last year, this wasn’t it.
Off the field, the recruiting class is ranked somewhere around #60, your top-ranked commit just flipped to Alabama, and your cornerbacks coach, a Spartan alum, is reportedly leaving for UCLA – a program that currently occupies the same space in the Big Ten standings as Michigan State. The possibility of Nick Marsh and other players being recruited by other programs and entering the portal has to be a concern. If you’re a decent player looking to enter the portal, what excites you about Michigan State? No one is talking about MSU and, even worse, they are talking about your rival who, despite a mediocre year of their own, just beat Ohio State and flipped the #1 recruit in the nation.
What do you do? A few years ago I probably would have said figure out who is really willing to do what it takes to win and then get rid of everyone who isn’t, regardless of their talent level. Culture and a sense of team are most important and those that don’t contribute positively can suck all the air and energy out of the room. But in the era of NIL and the transfer portal, I don’t know if that’s possible.
Michigan State had 61 new players this year and it didn’t seem to work. It’s probably very hard to build a culture in one year with that situation. Arizona State had 46. Is that the magic number? Or is it Indiana’s 31?
Perhaps Smith should look to Colorado as a model. Upon taking over in Boulder, Deion Sanders completely overhauled the roster in 2023, bringing in 72 new players. The Buffaloes started 3-0 and were the talk of the college football world before dropping 8 or their last 9 and losing quarterback Shedeur Sanders to injury playing behind a poor offensive line. Sounds familiar. This year, Sanders brought in 55 more new players, including 42 from the portal, improved the line play, and went 9-3. Maybe doubling down on the portal and hoping Chiles is the next Shedeur and Nick Marsh the next Travis Hunter on the offensive side of the ball is the answer.
Somehow though, that just doesn’t seem like the path forward for Smith and Co. He talked about player development in his post-Rutgers press conference. To be successful, even in the portal era, I think that is going to have to be a big part of this program’s identity, as it was under Dantonio. Of course Smith has a continued need for the portal; certainly this off season for some linemen.
Overall though, Smith has a short, but strong record in player and program development at Oregon State. In his first three years in Corvallis, he went 2-10, 5-7, 2-5 before finishing 7-6, 10-3, and 8-4. The three years prior to Smith the Beavers went 2-10, 4-8, and 1-11. It seems pretty obvious that he made a difference there. But it took a while. I’m still going to believe if Smith could do it at Oregon State, he can do it here. I’m not sure I’ll approach 2025 with the same level of optimism as this year but I am curious to see how the next couple of years play out.