.png)
Colorado
coach Mel Tucker and Michigan State have agreed in principle to make him the
new head football coach at MSU, people with knowledge of the matter told The
Athletic on Tuesday night. After the 48-year-old
Cleveland native turned down initial interest late last week, MSU power
brokers came back repeatedly to Tucker’s reps with an offer that was impossible
to ignore.
People with knowledge of
Tucker’s deal with the Spartans said it doubles his Colorado coaching salary
pool (which was $3.15 million in 2019), includes a substantial increase to the
Michigan State strength and conditioning staff budget and program
resources and will more than double Tucker’s Colorado salary, which is
around $2.7 million.
On Feb. 7, while Tucker was on a Colorado donor tour, his name
surfaced in a Detroit Free Press report that the Spartans planned to interview
him for the Michigan State vacancy. Tucker discussed the initial MSU
conversations with Colorado AD Rick George, according to people familiar with
the matter. Tucker’s tour was about raising funds for the Buffs program,
so on Saturday he tried to quell speculation by telling Buffs donors that he
was committed to doing his job there. On Monday, after Cincinnati’s Luke
Fickell — a strong candidate for the MSU job — announced he was staying with
the Bearcats, the Spartans circled back to Tucker’s reps with an offer not just
for the head coach but for his staff and for the program that he felt he needed
to compete for national titles.
“My understanding is that Coach Tucker was completely
transparent with CU’s Rick George, from MSU’s first contact until their last
push today,” a person with knowledge of the situation told The
Athletic on Tuesday night.
The hiring of Tucker by Michigan State away from Colorado is
another example that speaks to the widening gulf in resources between the
SEC/Big Ten and the rest of college football thanks in large part to a growing
revenue gap, a topic The Athletic addressed
two weeks ago.
The former Wisconsin
defensive back began his coaching career at Michigan State on Nick Saban’s
staff in the late 1990s. In the wake of Mark Dantonio stepping down after 13
seasons at Michigan State, Tucker has had several influential Spartan power
brokers pushing for him to be the next coach to take over the program.
Tucker has been on
national championship-winning staffs at Ohio State and Alabama and spent three
seasons as the defensive coordinator at Georgia before taking over at Colorado
in 2019. He led the Buffs to two Top 25 wins in his debut 5-7 season.
The Buffaloes’ recently signed recruiting class was ranked No. 7 in the Pac-12
by 247Sports — CU’s highest-ranked group since joining the conference in 2011.
Tucker’s roots in the Big
Ten are significant. His parents and brother still live in Ohio, and Tucker
was part of the first recruiting class at Wisconsin for coach Barry
Alvarez. He was a member of the Badgers’ 1993 Big Ten champion team that beat
UCLA in the Rose Bowl. At Ohio State, he recruited four players who would
eventually become NFL first-round draft picks and the 2006 Heisman Trophy
winner, quarterback Troy Smith.
(Photo: Dustin Bradford
/ Getty Images)
