Jonathan Smith Signing Day Press Conference Coverage

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Michigan State head football coach Jonathan Smith held a press conference inside the Spartan Stadium North End Zone Media Center on Wednesday to talk about his first Spartan recruiting class.

Michigan State signed 18 players to a National Letter of Intent on Wednesday, the first day of the early signing period.

Michigan State football head coach Johnathan Smith early signing day press conference transcript:

 

Opening statement…

Always an exciting day, signing day. The first one here at Michigan State, a lot of work went into it. I want to thank the recruiting staff, things have been moving fast, really impressed with the coordination and the work ethic, I can’t thank this staff enough.

 

Really excited about the group we got signed up and looking forward to building this roster over the next few months and even going in the summer, this a great, great start.

 

I want to talk about how we got here. Three weeks ago, I arrived and was excited to meet the team, had my first team meeting that Monday and dove into the current roster, trying to grow some relationships there, learn what we have on the roster positionally and age wise. That mindset hasn’t changed in the last three weeks. First day, I was able to get out on the road with coaches and travel through the greater area of Detroit. A bunch of good-looking players, enjoyed meeting high school coaches around that city, Nick Marsh on day one being able to see him, and meet his mom. That’s how we attacked the first day, that Friday out.

 

Then the next week it was still back to the current roster, meeting individually with our current roster, getting to know them, then traveled late afternoon and evenings for home visits throughout that first week. All at the same time trying to hire a defensive coordinator, I brought six coaches over here with me that I have deep trust and knowledge of, but a huge piece of this was the defensive coordinator, a lot of phone calls, talked to a lot of people interested in the job, continued to circle back to Joe Rossi. I couldn’t be more excited adding him in the middle of this process through three weeks, then he dove…