I have a quick question about skyrim on the xbox 360. I was wondering if I deleted the patch that blocked the smithing exploit, Could I play offline and get my smithing to 100 and then just connect back to live and download the updates, then continue playing on the same character?

Yes, that works, but only if you also delete the DLC you have(you can download them for free again later). And the character has to be made without the DLC, or else it will not run.

Easiest way is to delete the patches and DLC(DLC will not run without patches, IIRC), start a character, grind smithing and then download all your stuff again. My brother used to do this. I've done it a couple of times too.