Jonathan Smith is an avatar of more than just MSU football. From the erosion of local rivalries to the rise of the money game, the first-year Spartan coach invites questions on more than just, say, the play at the line of scrimmage, though that was alarming enough in MSU’s Oct. 4 31-10 shellacking at Oregon, which was hosting its first Big 10 game.
Okay, so Lansing State Journal beat writer, Graham Couch, did warn of a team “struggling with their reality and limitations.” But at Autzen Stadium, inside and out, was there any struggle among fans to enjoy the superleague era?
Smith is a known quantity in the state, having succeeded at Oregon State as a quarterback and head coach. By the time he was announced as MSU’s new coach last fall, conference realignments were well underway, with all of Oregon State’s Pac-12 counterparts — except for Washington State — having bolted for more lucrative pastures, including Oregon and Washington to the Big 10. Yet Smith himself seems spared as the target of consternation about the West Coast conference collapse, at least based on parking lot conversations.
“I was thrilled Jonathan Smith went to Michigan State because, you know, a Beaver to the Big 10,” said Haley Harrington, a 2023 Oregon State graduate decked out in MSU gear at a decades-running Ducks tailgate hosted by family friends Jeff and Linh Hegstrom.
Harrington’s Spartan spirit was inherited from a gaggle of relatives — grandparents, aunts and uncles, and her dad Kurt — all of whom graduated from MSU, which she visited often growing up, including for a few games at Spartan Stadium.
Pacific Coast tailgates hold up well enough to Midwest standards, though Eugene is too spread out for her liking. “I had to walk like 30 minutes just to get here from where I parked,” she said.
“This is great,” said Kurt, looking out at the tame tailgating scene from under the brim of an MSU hat. “Nobody’s yelling at me, throwing anything on me, spitting on me. Keep it up, Ducks, way to be civil.”
Kurt, a 1991 MSU engineering grad and longtime Oregon resident, was similarly hopeful about Smith, despite the shambles of the Pac-12 he left behind. “I can see him sticking around for a while.”
His mom, Josephine ‘Jo’ Smith, agreed. Visiting from Sanibel, Florida, she timed her cross-country family visit with this game, the third time she’s seen MSU play at Autzen. While mixed on the new coast-to-coast Big 10, the coach has won her over, along with many of her fellow board members of the MSU Downtown Coaches Club, where she serves as treasurer, despite decamping from Michigan to the Sunshine State several years ago.
“The club is drawing lots of people in for dinners and things, so everyone’s happy,” she said, pointing out her MSU jewelry that accented her Spartan sweater. “I listen to him on podcasts,” she added.
“From a fan standpoint, the test is the Michigan game,” said Nate Sucheki, who, along with his wife Angela, flew to Oregon from Hudsonville, Mich., earlier in the day. Longtime season ticketholders in East Lansing, the Suchekis travel to at least one away game a year. And since the not-your-father’s Big 10 expansion started years ago, he has had time to form opinions on the previous newcomers. Nicest fans? Nebraska. Best food? Rutgers and Maryland, though, having just arrived, he hadn’t yet had time to dig into the Hegstrom’s fajita bowls, which included Linh’s homemade pickled jalapenos. On beating that school in Ann Arbor: “I gave him two, maybe three years.”
Meantime, there was a game to be played inside Autzen, a setting that hasn’t been kind to Smith, who has never won in Eugene either as an Oregon State player or coach. It was soon clear it would be a green-not-orange-golf-shirt, same-result kind of night for Smith, with MSU never really in the game after fumbling away an early chance to score. But the lack of competition didn’t seem to dampen the vibe and noise, more than occasionally deafening to Alan Zhou, a University of Oregon student shooting photos on the field for Hour Detroit.
“Next time I’ll bring earplugs…the other photographers all had them,” said Zhou, listing the takeaways from shooting his first Big 10 game, which included fans screaming out the lyrics — I LEFT MY HEART IN OREGON! — to Mat Kearney’s song, Coming Home (Oregon). Another takeaway: Smith is tricky to photograph, at least if you’re looking for histrionics.
“He kind of just strolls back and forth on the sideline,” added Zhou. The postgame press conference was similarly bland, with Smith offering bromides — “we’ve gotta regroup…we’ve got a lot of football in front of us” — until time was up.
All in all, Smith and the Big 10 coming to Eugene was a good enough show to have traffic still snarled around Autzen more than an hour after the game ended. And Midwest optimism is tough to quell.
“I didn’t realize Oregon was number 8 in the country,” texted Sucheki’s daughter, Erika, who extended a work trip to the Portland area from Grand Rapids to join her parents at the game, with plans to explore Cannon Beach the next day. “At least we covered the spread!”
Geoff Koch’s last story for Hour Detroit, “How Thomas McGuane Went From Academic Ignominy to Literary Icon,” appeared in May 2024.
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