REPORT: Is College Football Expert's Outlook for the Spartans' 2024 Season Valid?

Michigan State will enter its first season under Coach Jonathan Smith. Well-renowned college football expert Phil Steele believes it will be a difficult season for the Green and White.

Michigan State's head coach Jonathan Smith looks on during the Spring Showcase on Saturday, April 20, 2024, at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing. / Nick King/Lansing State Journal / USA

Michigan State football is entering its first season under Coach Jonathan Smith, who joined the program after helping rebuild his alma mater’s football program at Oregon State. Coach Smith accepted a similar challenge in East Lansing and, so far, has done a solid job getting his team prepared for the upcoming season.

While there was excitement for a new Michigan State coaching regime, it quickly wore off as the Spartans lost numerous players to the transfer portal earlier this offseason, seemingly expressing how those players felt about the new coaching staff. While it is normal for a college football program to lose many players upon a new coach’s arrival, Michigan State had more than the average number of players entering the transfer portal.

Smith and his coaching staff were able to reverse their fortune in the transfer portal, eventually signing one of the top transfer portal classes for the upcoming season. Smith and Michigan State then offered scholarships to many talented players in June, securing commitments from nearly a dozen recruits in the 2025 and 2026 recruiting classes. 

It has undoubtedly been an up-and-down season for Smith and Michigan State. Still, considering their situation upon arriving in East Lansing, they have had about as productive an offseason as expected. While Smith and the Spartans still have a long way to go, he and his coaching staff did an admirable job during their first offseason at the helm.

Even so, college football expert Phil Steele predicts the Spartans will face a difficult road this upcoming season. In his 2024 College Football Preview magazine, Steele projected Michigan State to finish last in the Big Ten, finishing slightly worse than Purdue and Northwestern, who he projected to finish 17th and 16th, respectively. Steele projected Minnesota to finish 15th and UCLA at 14th. 

He projected Ohio State to win the Big Ten this season, with Oregon and Penn State finishing second and third behind the Buckeyes, and Michigan finishing fourth behind those three. Iowa rounds out Steele’s top five. This is noteworthy, as the Spartans play four of Steele’s top five Big Ten schools in a span of five weeks.

With how different this Spartan team will look heading into the 2024 season, you can't assume they're going to shock the world in Smith's first year at the helm, but you also can't assume they will finish at the bottom of the conference. There just is simply not enough there to make that educated guess.

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