Mel Tucker Proves MSU Is On the Right Path, Regardless Of If He Succeeds.
I like College Football. I especially like Big Ten Football, so I want to start writing about it. First real foray outside of the Pistons and NBA, let me know what you think.
Michigan State Football ended up being one of the biggest surprises of a season, the only reason that it wasn’t THE surprise of the season is that it was a season full of them. Widely predicted to miss a bowl game, and even optimistic fans largely hoped to simply make one, Michigan State blew all expectations out of the water to finish 11-2, with wins over Michigan, Penn State, and a New Years’ 6 victory over Pitt in the Peach Bowl.
The result was that Mel Tucker, who has NFL and deep south coaching pedigree on his resume, became an exceptionally hot commodity. After weeks of speculation that he was being targeted by LSU, he signed an extension with Michigan State for a seemingly absurd 10-year $95 million contract.
This contract has been ridiculed as absurd and crazy for plenty of reasons, many of which are even perfectly fair reasons. His track record is not long, they lucked out by finding an NFL running back from the depth chart of Wake Forest, they probably should’ve lost at least one of those close wins, MSU is a basketball school why do they have the highest-paid football coach in the Big 10, etc. etc.
Once again, many of those criticisms are fair, in particular the lack of track record and the question of how sustainable a model this season can set. College football is maybe the ultimate small sample-size sport where your record can not be overly representative of how good a team actually is, and you do not usually pull a Heisman-quality player from the transfer portal.
Even with all that in mind, the move to keep him, even at such an exorbitant price, is not only the right decision, but it shows that MSU is on the right path for football success in the long run even if those criticisms end up being true and Tucker falters down the line.
Effectively, Michigan State is at a hugely important moment for the program. They got a historic run under Mark Dantonio, a run that put them in a position where pundits, when talking about how tough the Big 10 East is, put MSU on the list along with Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan, the idea that MSU would be in the conversation with those programs would be laughable in 2006.
The problem is that one stretch of high success, even as much success as Dantonio’s MSU, does not take a mid-tier program and make it a high-tier program. If MSU were to fade away then the Dantonio era is just a high-point of a mid-tier program. There is any number of programs that were seemingly down-trodden see stretches of 5-10 years of varying degrees of success, that alone doesn’t make you a main-stay at the top or the sort of brand strength that provides a solid cornerstone to build for the future.
HOWEVA, if you have a stretch like that, and then follow it up with another stretch under a totally different regime? Now you have a blue-blood brewing. Effectively, the Spartans have the opportunity to prove that they didn’t just make one good coaching hire, they have built the sort of program cornerstone that can have different people and approaches succeed.
There’s another thing to consider here as well, a huge part of college football is convincing teenagers to come and play for you. That means that unless you have the sort of generational success of the genuine blue-bloods, recent history is everything. So if Michigan State can maintain a degree of relevance for another 5 years, they will reach a point where recruits will have viewed MSU as a genuine football power for their entire lives, that matters.
But your title says that even if Tucker himself fails, he shows the program is in the right direction, how does that play out?
Because of who and what Tucker is.
First off, as absurd as his contract is, going all-in on him shows that MSU recognizes the importance of this moment. Even if there are real questions about Tucker long-term, it isn’t likely that MSU would attract a better option right now if he left, no reason to screw around. If MSU retains national relevence in the near future they can cross an important threshold towards the type of establishment that puts a high floor on your program.
Secondly, because of what Tucker is as a coach. That is to say, Tucker is not Mark Dantonio at all. Dantonio-era MSU pulled in some high-end recruits but it was, at its core, a development program that relied on retention, culture, and fundamentals to overcome the superior talent of opponents.
The thing that has to be remembered though, is that the Big Ten that Dantonio found success in, is not the Big Ten that Tucker steps into. Just after Dantonio arrived at MSU, Michigan hired Rich Rodriquez and entered the worst period in program history. A few years in, Penn State had the Sandusky scandal which utterly broke their program, even Ohio State had a brief downturn for one season, and the conference had not been broken up into the current division format.
Today’s Big 10 has a fully weaponized Ohio State, Michigan finally just broke through for a Big 10 Championship, Penn State is a bit dicey but they are still in a solid spot and recruiting like crazy (despite their record this season, Penn State really got killed by injuries). and the real kicker is that they are now in the same division as all three of those teams.
To put it bluntly, Michigan State cannot win with Dantonio’s Michigan State in today’s enviroment. They now play in one of the two toughest divisions in the country, and all three blue bloods in that division are on decent to excellent position for the future.
If you looked back at the Summer before the 2007 season you could’ve said the same thing.
That’s true, Michigan and Ohio State played a #1 vs #2 game and Penn State was seemingly bouncing back from a down-stretch. But your plan for success should not be “well maybe everyone else will totally impolode again”.
Fair
With all that in mind, the biggest difference between Tucker and Dantonio is that Tucker puts a huge emphasis on recruiting. (as a side note, due to how quick the media is to slap “Recruiter” on every black coach in college football, a moniker that also often denotes not being good at actual football coaching, I want to make clear that Tucker has solid proof of being rock-solid schematically. You do not get to the NFL without being a excellent football guy. Just to make that clear, I’m talking lots about his recruiting prowess here, but there is more he brings to the table, that just isn’t what this piece is about) Michigan State will likely never recruit to the same level that those three schools do, but in order to consistently compete with them you cannot be lagging too far behind. If those three are going to be bringing in borderline top-10 recruiting classes every year, you can’t be in the 30s.
For a good example of how today’s Bit 10 is different, consider Dantonio’s first Big 10 championship in 2010. That season they beat a good Wisconsin team at home for their best win and got pummeled on the road at Kinnick against a so-so Iowa team for their only (regular season) loss of the season. They beat a Michigan team that finished 7-6 in Rich Rod’s last season, they beat a Notre Dame team that finished 8-5, a Penn State that finished 7-6, they eeked by a 4-8 Purdue. They did not play Ohio State.
This path to a Big 10 title is gone.
This is why the Tucker extension shows a good future for Michigan State. Because MSU, as a program, realizes that path is gone. There will be no accidents or flukes coming out of the Big 10 west, the only way to win a Big 10 for Michigan State today is to be a capital “E” ELITE program, and the way you do that is shoveling money towards a coach who leads a program that puts a high value on talent. You can build good success on fundamentals, you build a blue-blood on talent, and that’s what MSU is trying to do.