Alan Haller reveals what made Jonathan Smith top choice for Michigan State

As Michigan State athletic director Alan Haller waded into the search for a new head football coach, a number of things made Oregon State head coach Jonathan Smith attractive as a candidate. And beyond not hearing a bad word about Smith, Haller could see how Smith would fit nice in East Lansing.

The more and more the two interacted, the more comfortable Haller got. Plus, Smith has certainly proved his mettle on the field.

You know, he just — he can coach. But he fits in to us. He was so much like some of our other head coaches. He had a community feel to him, he loved the student athletes, he wanted to develop them. It was about the university, it wasn’t about him,” Haller said, tacking on a bit about a humorous back-and-forth he had with Smith. “I told him we have 53 people in our football building in terms of support staff. He’s like, ‘Oh, that’s way too many.’ I was like, ‘I like you.’ He’s like, ‘I don’t need that many people.’ I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to hold you to that coach.’ So it’s on tape, please print it.”

Haller also shared that while he might not have heard one single rave review that sold him on Smith, the lack of drawbacks or red flags stood out.

“There was nothing negative ever said about him. It was that,” Haller said. “No one said anything about him that raised a flag. It was, ‘This guy is awesome, the community is going to love him. They’re going to love his style of play. He recruits well,’ and everyone said that.”

Moreover, Smith sold Haller a bit on his vision for MSU football, mostly that it’s not predicated solely on keeping pace with the current top dogs in the conference.

“But yeah, at this level of college football, it’s always ‘Ohio State is doing this’ or ‘Somebody else is doing that.’ He never said any of that. It was just about getting the right people in the building, getting the right student athletes and developing a relationship.

Smith said conference realignment didn’t factor into his decision to come to MSU

Though his departure came as the Pac-12 disintegrated, leaving Oregon State (and Washington State) to fend for themselves, Smith said that backdrop didn’t play an outsized role in his decision to head to the Big Ten. Four of the teams from the Pac-12 will be in the Big Ten going forward.

“Not a major factor,” Smith said of the realignment at his introductory presser. “Like I tried to describe it to my team: Look, the instability, conference realignment, all of this stuff, there’s something brewing in me of the idea of going somewhere if the fit was right. And just being really selective on that. So yeah, other opportunity here or there, wasn’t interested. Just the more I engaged in conversation with Michigan State, I got more and more excited about it.”