Let the Mel Tucker era begin at Michigan State.
Late last night, Bruce Feldman of The Athletic broke the news that the Spartans and Mel Tucker had reached an agreement for the Colorado head coach to succeed Mark Dantonio in East Lansing.
Despite Tucker not being the Spartans’ first choice, the move does come as a bit of a surprise. Just days ago, it appeared that Tucker would be the second head coach to turn down Michigan State after Luke Fickell when he seemed committed to see things through at Colorado after just one season in Boulder.
However, in the end, Michigan State’s offer to double his salary and boost his resources by increasing his assistant coaching salary pool by $1.5 million was obviously too much for Tucker to pass up.
Although his head coaching experience is limited Tucker does bring some NFL and big college program cachet to East Lansing. He’s spent time as an assistant in the NFL with the Browns, Jaguars, Bears and even served as an interim head coach in Jacksonville for five games back in 2011. He also has his connections within SEC country previously serving as an assistant with Alabama, Georgia, LSU. Lastly, Tucker too does have familiarities with the Big Ten having played for Wisconsin during the early ’90s and as a coach with Ohio State from 2001 to 2004.
Most importantly though Tucker does have a reputation as being a good recruiter. Understandably too this isn’t some high profile hire that’s going to generate a bunch of unnecessary and unrealistic hype heading into the season. Essentially Tucker will come to East Lansing with not a ton of pressure on his shoulders to win right away and really be tabbed to do what he was hired in Colorado to do — get things turned around and rebuilt. Only this time, he’ll have many more resources to work with.
