With one game remaining in the 2025 season, there’s likely nothing he can do to really win over the fanbase other than beating Maryland by double-digits and signing a top 25 recruiting class before dominating the portal. That would be the only thing that would make fans even slightly OK with the idea of him returning for a third season.
However, he feels like he can fix things in Michigan State despite the program looking incredibly broken. The current state of Michigan State football is bad, and it’s seemingly only getting worse.
Smith doesn’t believe that would be the case if he was brought back for the 2026 season, and he’s even said that he understands the frustration with the losses, and he’s frustrated, too, but in today’s landscape of college football, you have to prove you can turn things around in the first year or two.