Michigan State is firing coach Jonathan Smith one day after the Spartans concluded a 4-8 season, sources tell CBS Sports’ Matt Zenitz. Michigan State capped its 2025 campaign with a 38-28 victory over Maryland, which gave the Spartans their first Big Ten win of the season.
Zenitz also reports the Spartans are expected to hire former Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald as Smith’s replacement. Fitzgerald won 110 games in 17 seasons with the Wildcats.
Smith departs Michigan State after just two seasons and an official record of 4-15. The Spartans won five games in 2024, but vacated them due to recruiting violations committed by former Michigan State coach Mel Tucker.
Michigan State started the season 3-0 against nonconference opponents, including a double-overtime victory against 2-10 Boston College, before losing eight-straight Big Ten games. Those eight conference losses are its most since 2016. Six of those losses came by at least two possessions, as well.
The Spartans finished in the bottom third of the Big Ten in both total offense (345.5 yards per game; 13th) and total defense (378.8 ypg; 14th). They failed to score more than 20 points in six out of their nine conference games while allowing 32.1 points per game to Big Ten opponents.
Smith, a former quarterback at Oregon State, spent six seasons coaching his alma mater prior to his hiring at Michigan State. He left Corvallis with a 34-35 record, including three straight winning seasons in each of his last three years. The Beavers went 10-3 in 2022 and finished at No. 17 in the AP Top 25 with Smith leading the way.
Fitzgerald could make Big Ten return
Fitzgerald has been out of the college game for three seasons now, but it seems as if that could change soon. He’d bring a wealth of Big Ten experience to East Lansing from his time at Northwestern.
Fitzgerald delivered a hall of fame career as a linebacker with the Wildcats and served as a defensive assistant from 2001-05 before his promotion to head coach ahead of the 2006 season. After amassing a 10-14 record in his first two years, Fitzgerald took the Wildcats to their first of five straight bowl appearances in 2008.
Fitzgerald’s Wildcats also went to four straight bowls from 2015-18. His 110 wins and 64 Big Ten victories as Northwestern’s coach are both program records. The Wildcats also made it to 10 bowls during Fitzgerald’s tenure despite making the postseason just six times in 123 seasons prior to his hiring. His five bowl victories are the most for a coach in school history and he’s the only Northwestern coach to ever make it to back-to-back bowl games.
But his tenure unraveled quickly in the final years. Outside of a 7-2 record, capped by a a win in the Citrus Bowl and a top-10 finish in the AP poll, during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Fitzgerald won seven games from 2019-22.
The Wildcats had a losing record in three out of his last four years with the program. They went 1-8 in Big Ten play in 2019, 2021 and 2022.
Then, on July 8, 2023, Northwestern suspended Fitzgerald without pay for two weeks after details surfaced alleging graphic instances of hazing within the program. University administrators opted to revisit his status with the program after two former players provided details of the hazing, which was sexual in nature, to The Daily Northwestern student newspaper and he was fired three days later.
In Aug. 2025, Northwestern and Fitzgerald reached a settlement ending his wrongful termination lawsuit against the university.
Smith’s tenure represents lose-lose situation for Michigan State, Oregon State
Smith’s failures perpetuated a stretch of mediocrity at Michigan State and created an even murkier outlook for the Spartans’ future. That he even took the job in the first place ahead of the 2024 season also set his former school, Oregon State, back to an enormous extent. Once a rising star in the industry, Smith arguably did more harm than good over the last two calendar years.
Given his accomplishments at Oregon State — where he pulled his alma mater out of the depths of the Pac-12 and turned it back into a perennial winner — Smith looked like a lifeline for a Michigan State program that needed similar help. Instead, the Spartans are now two more years removed from their last winning season and will be on their second coaching search since 2023 with little recent success to sell to prospective candidates.
Meanwhile, back at Oregon State, Smith bolted at an inopportune time for the Beavers. Conference realignment effectively relegated their program out of the Power Four, and the coaching change precipitated a mass exodus through the transfer portal that left them devoid of the caliber of talent they had been used to rostering as power conference members. Smith’s former defensive coordinator, Trent Bray, took the reins and went just 5-14 before his firing midway through the 2025 campaign.
Smith went 25-13 (.658) over his final three years at Oregon State. Since his departure, the Beavers and Spartans posted a combined winning percentage of 0.333. Neither program is better off today than it was when he made his decision to leave Corvallis.
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