Michigan State's New Football Coach

[WiredTiger]

The Spartans have signed former Louisville head coach John. L. Smith to be their new coach. Does anyone know anything about Smith? I know he has had some great QBs in his programs and that his teams have pretty much had a winning record every year but that's about it.

[Skip]

Smith is a very good coach, though this year was a major disappointment that can largely be laid at the feet of the coaching staff. He may get off the hook because most of his key assistants left after last year to take bigger jobs so there was a too big acclimatization period.

Until this year, the only knock on him here has been a bit of laxity on enforcing rules and/or letting major players off of the hook to keep them on the team ... and a propensity for penalties. On the field the team has always done well on offense, defense, and special teams - again, until this year.

I am very PO'd about the way the hiring and its leaking during the bowl game last night was handled. I mean, MSU fires their coach 6 weeks ago, but has to contact Louisville the DAY OF THEIR BOWL GAME and then leak the info so that the entire game and its coverage is sublimated by the 'rumor'. Our paper today said that all the players could do on the sidelines was ask reporters what was going on while their friends with cell phones were calling them to tell them about the situation .... A very low class act.

Clearly though, it was an offer too good for John L to turn down. A BCS conference, much bigger and better facilities and fan base, etc. I wish him luck and hope we can find another diamond in the rough down in in mid-major C-USA land.

[pathogan]

...what are they trying to get maximun exposure for their program? I'm sure.sigh

[WiredTiger]

I agree that the handling of signing the coach was not done very well. Word out of Detroit is that Kirk Gibson announced it as breaking news. That got out on the internet and then people started calling injured Louisville players with the news. No one is sure if Gibson had inside information as a representive of the University or not. Michigan State fans weren't too happy about way things went down either. This is part of the reason that MSU has been so messed up lately. There are opposing forces within the University that seem to purposely try to mess things up for each other. I suspect that this might have been the case here but I am surprised that Gibson was caught in the middle of this.