Mel Tucker has gone and done it now.
Perpetrated the mother of all missteps.
Pulled a dark cloud over his school, Michigan State, and its football program, not to mention the entire coaching profession.
Shredded his own reputation.
Cost himself, potentially — well, almost for sure — the remaining $80 million on his contract.
And all because he couldn’t keep himself from vigorously fantasizing, let’s call it, while on the phone with a prominent advocate for ending sexual violence who speaks to college teams across the country — including Tucker’s — and is a survivor of gang rape.
By God, that’s how the former Bears defensive coordinator will be remembered after his time in East Lansing is over, which it pretty much — though not officially — is.
Of course, there are two sides to this story. A hers, Brenda Tracy’s, and a his, Tucker’s. A “he did it” and a “she asked for it.” A woman who’s a victim of sexual harassment or a powerful coach who’s being set up for fame and a payday. In other words, the usual.
Tracy accused Tucker, 51, of making sexual comments and masturbating without her consent during an April 2022 phone call. She filed a formal Title IX complaint in December, and by July of this year an external investigation commissioned by the school was completed. A hearing is scheduled for the week of Oct. 5 to determine if Tucker violated the school’s sexual-misconduct policy, at which point his future as coach will be decided.
But one would expect that’s merely a formality. Michigan State suspended Tucker without pay on Sunday — only after USA Today uncovered the story of Tracy’s complaint and the school’s investigation that very morning.
That’s nine months after interim president Teresa Woodruff and athletic director Alan Haller learned of the complaint, and one day after Tucker was allowed to coach his second game of the season. MSU’s hands were tied, Woodruff has explained, by the need to let the Title IX process play out. Isn’t that the sort of thing they all say once a behind-the-scenes problem becomes a public scandal?
MSU is where physician Larry Nassar was able to commit sexual assaults over the course of nearly two decades before finally being put away for life in 2017.
In recent years, MSU and Michigan each paid about $500 million in settlements to victims of sexual assault. Michigan had sports doctor Robert Anderson, who somehow assaulted students over the course of 37 years at the school and got away with it, dying in 2008 before more than 1,000 alleged victims came forward. A new scandal involving a superstar coach — who became college football’s second-highest-paid coach when he signed a new 10-year, $95 million pact in 2021 — is going to be especially triggering in this state.
“As a survivor, I’m shocked,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement. “As a Spartan, I’m disappointed. As Governor, I want answers.”
Tucker is toast.
He is aggressively defending himself. On Monday, he released a sweeping statement through his attorney in which he called Tracy’s allegations of harassment “completely false,” the fallout thus far unfair and his upcoming “sham” of a hearing “so flawed that there is no other opportunity [than this statement] for the truth to come out.”
Tucker isn’t denying the sexual nature of Tracy’s account of the phone call in question. He claims their “mutual friendship” had grown into an “adult relationship,” that Tracy escalated things on the call by texting a “provocative” photo of them together and “suggesting what she may look like without clothes,” and that the “late-night, intimate conversation” fell outside the scope of Title IX or any university policy. Tucker, who has been married for over 20 years, also claims to have been estranged from his wife.
“This investigation has not been fair or unbiased,” Tucker said. “I can only conclude that there is an ulterior motive designed to terminate my contract based on some other factor such as a desire to avoid any Nassar taint, or my race or gender.”
Perhaps needless to say, it’s all the money at stake that undoubtedly is the key issue. Tucker wants his, no different than ex-Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald wants the $42 million that was left on his deal when he was fired in July. But if Fitzgerald had to go because hazing happened in his program, MSU and Tucker — whose optics are even worse — are certain to face in opposite directions forevermore.
Saving $80 million on an astonishingly overpaid coach would be — to invoke the name of the school fight song — “Victory for MSU.”
How did Tucker even get to the point of making more than Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh or Penn State’s James Franklin and roughly the same as Ohio State’s Ryan Day?
Tucker’s Bears defenses were so catastrophically terrible that a USA Today headline late in the 2014 season — his second and last with the team — pretty much said it all: “It’s been 91 years since an NFL defense was as bad as the Chicago Bears.”
He was head coach at Colorado for one season, 2019, before bolting for MSU. The Buffaloes had ranked in the top half of the Pac-12 defensively for four years running, but, under Tucker, things went off a cliff on the side of the ball that was his specialty. Still, MSU responded to that by doubling his salary, which it would do again — and then some — as the Spartans were closing in on 11 wins in 2021.
But an interesting thing about that 2021 team: It won despite having the worst defense in the Big Ten and — if you can believe it — a pass defense ranked 130th, literally dead last, in the country. It made a lot more sense when the Spartans, with the second-worst Big Ten defense in 2022, slipped to 5-7.
No, folks, this isn’t about football. It’s about Tucker, who can explain and excuse his behavior all he wants, but it’s not going to work.
His defenses never do.
