Inside Alan Haller's hiring of Jonathan Smith
TurnkeyZRG assisted with the search.
VIA 247SPORTS - Michigan State has made the hiring of Oregon State head coach Jonathan Smith official, as the Spartans have reeled in the 2022 PAC-12 Coach of the Year from his alma mater in Corvallis. The Spartans announced Smith's hiring on Saturday morning with this press release, just one day after OSU's final game of the regular season. Taking a closer look at how this all came together, one can’t help but give massive credit to MSU athletic director Alan Haller.
Back on September 1st, 2021, the Spartans hired Haller to be the school’s 20th athletic director. In the time since, he has made some great hires for the program, especially hockey coach Adam Nightingale and women’s soccer coach Jeff Hosler. So far, Robyn Fralick and Leah Johnson also look like promising hires in women’s basketball and women’s volleyball, respectively. On paper, it appears that Haller has done it again.
In Jonathan Smith, Haller did something that MSU has never done once before in the last 70 years. He poached a coach with more than one year of bona fide Power 5 head coaching experience. Haller, who was also part of the Mel Tucker search committee, did help hire Tucker from the P5 ranks, but he only had one year of experience being a HC at that level. Smith just wrapped up his seventh season as the head man in Corvallis.
Doing this was actually harder than one would think, given that Oregon State is a much lesser program than MSU. Sure, MSU is top 19 in all-time wins, top 17 in revenue, has a 72k capacity stadium, has a massive new facility on the way, and competes in a top two football conference. And yes, Oregon State is about to go independent and its future hangs very much in the balance.
However, this decision for Smith was not about Oregon State vs Michigan State. It was really about Michigan State today vs wait another year for a different job. Smith was never going to be a lifer at OSU given their future trajectory, but he actually had every reason to stay one more year at OSU: the Beavers are set to schedule 4-6 P4 opponents next season have a legit strength of schedule, they were set to return most of its offense & the best player on defense, AD Scott Barnes was going to make every effort that Smith would retain key assistants (which Smith cared about more than his own compensation), and a few more West Coast jobs might have opened up next year. As has been beaten into the ground, Smith has no ties to the Midwest.
Yet, despite the fact that Smith could have probably stuck around for one final season, gone 10-2 or 9-3 again next year, and then have gotten to pick from a closer job opening, Haller and the MSU search committee got him locked down & sold Smith on the vision. Similarly, credit to Smith for selling Haller on why he is the right man for the job. Surely, there was no shortage of discussion on Smith’s regional unfamiliarity, but his plan for that regard was sound enough to get him hired.
Another part of the process that deserves admiration is the overall lack of real leaks throughout the process. Until Smith went on Portland radio and opened the can of worms, there were not any whispers about him being the top choice for MSU. For three months, Smith was the number one choice and no outlet was able to confirm that. The only clear intel that was able to be gleaned from sources pertained to (1) the Urban Meyer smoke not being real and (2) the timing goal of post-Week 13 was still on track. Other than that, the rest was tea leaf reading for the most part, along with checking with some sources around the country. Haller and his search committee had it locked down tight.
Plus, even the Smith-induced rumors & buzz at the very end didn’t really have any impact. The secrecy at the very end doesn’t serve much of a purpose anyway. Once MSU made Smith the offer, they already tipped their hand and gave him leverage by admitting he is who they want. You really want secrecy during the process of attracting and interviewing other candidates. That’s when you don’t want anyone to know Smith is the clear front-runner and have them reject the interview and not waste their time. You just want to give yourself a fully-invested & widely-interested talent pool by not having early leaks.
In order to help him with this process, Haller had hired search firm TurnkeyZRG. Managing partner Chad Chatlos, whose father played football at Michigan State, was the TurnkeyZRG consultant in charge of helping the Spartans. His relationship with Clint Dowdle, Smith’s agent ever since Dowdle split from CAA & Jimmy Sexton, was very helpful in this process. When Dowdle worked as Sexton’s right hand man, he was responsible for several hires that were conducted by Chatlos’ former Ventura Partners firm and TurnkeyZRG.
It remains to be seen how the hiring of Smith plays out in East Lansing. More promising coaches have failed, less promising coaches have succeeded. It’s a hard business and no one shoots 100% in projecting successful futures. With that said, on paper, Alan Haller did about as good of a job with this process as any Spartan fan could have hoped. Now, all the focus will be on how Haller can empower Smith with future resources, namely getting NIL to work more smoothly around the university’s ecosystem. So far, he’s answered the call at each turn.
ABOUT TURNKEYZRG
Founded in 1996, TurnkeyZRG is a highly specialized talent recruitment/executive search firm filling C-level, senior-level and mid-management level positions throughout sports, entertainment and media. Over the past 25 years, TurnkeyZRG has filled more than 1,400 positions throughout sports, entertainment, music and media. TurnkeyZRG helps teams, leagues, stadiums, arenas, theaters, college athletic departments, events, sponsors, agencies, media companies, private equity companies and other clients identify, recruit and hire the very best management talent. Turnkey now benefits from ZRG’s global footprint, full array of industry practice groups, data-driven, analytical search tools, and technology investment in changing the way executive search/talent recruiting is done. TurnkeyZRG becomes a tech-enabled disrupter of the prior executive search model.