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Mother Nature wasn’t the only one making it rain this April.
The notoriously
precipitation-filled month was one of the more exciting months in recent memory
for Michigan State football recruiting. First-year head coach Mel Tucker started the fourth month
of 2020 with zero committed prospects and ended the 30 days with ten recruits
and a top 25 recruiting class. Prospects from Michigan, Florida, Texas,
Maryland, and New Jersey made for an exciting first batch of new players under
the new regime.
It was enough to get an MSU fanbase
that had been contemplatively sleepy the last two years out of its collective
seat and again excited about their football program.
Anybody who pays attention to
Tucker, his mantras, and his reputation shouldn’t be surprised by the early
results. Tucker came to MSU as a highly-regarded recruiter, hardened by the
battlegrounds of SEC recruiting. A reasonable expectation for Tucker during his
first season is (perhaps “was” due to the COVID-19 pandemic) to be competitive,
show some promise, and pull a top 25 recruiting class. That last one is a decently
high bar; one Mark Dantonio only cleared four times in 13 years. However, the
expectations should be higher for Tucker. When he says the biggest thing he has
learned as a coach is to, “recruit every day,” he better recruit every damn
day.
Despite those lofty recruiting
expectations, Tucker has cleared the bar through the beginning of May for a
majority of respondents to this Twitter poll.
I assume a good portion of
the 2% voting “below” are either trolling or clicked the wrong answer. The rest
are loons.
On the surface it may seem absurd
to suggest anything other than Tucker greatly exceeding expectations. He got ten commits adding up to
the 23rd-ranked class in the country less than two months into his job without
the ability to get recruits on campus because there’s a damn pandemic going on
outside. All fair.
There is, however, another side to
the coin. Right now Michigan State’s average prospect rating on 247Sports is
.8496. That’s on a scale from zero to .9999. MSU’s 2020 recruiting class–Mark
Dantonio’s final class at Michigan State–had an average prospect rating of
.8568. That class finished ranked 43rd in the country and tenth in the Big Ten.
In 2017 Michigan State’s average prospect rating was .8490, the lowest since
Dantonio’s first full class in 2008. That 2017 class ranked 36th in the country
and sixth in the Big Ten. In order to exceed expectations, Tucker has to
handedly beat those those marks by time the early signing period rolls around
in December.
I added another poll to try and put
Tucker’s recruiting on a numerical scale. As you can see a lot of fans are very
happy with the start, but still feel there is some work to be done.
To get to a nine or ten on
that scale Tucker will need to start winning some real recruiting battles.
He’ll need to convince top 300 prospects to choose Michigan State over the
likes of Michigan, Penn State, Notre Dame, Oregon, USC, etc. Win a few of those
and he’d be cooking with gas. There are plenty of intriguing prospects with
some good upside in MSU’s 2021 class. There also needs to be a few no-doubt
players in there as well.
However it shakes out, one thing is for certain. Michigan State fans
are overwhelmingly convinced their football program’s recruiting game is in a
better spot right now with Mel Tucker than had Mark Dantonio not
retired.
Given Dantonio’s inability
to consistently sign recruiting classes up to the standard of his team’s actual
on-field performance and the early returns for Tucker, that result was
expected.
There is still much to be decided
as college football recruiting is in a very strange time due to the coronavirus
pandemic. Fall could be a bizarre time of de-commits and flips if on and
off-campus recruiting activities are allowed to return in full.
It’s early, but Michigan State fans are finally
confident they have a head coach and staff that can recruit well enough to keep
them competitive with the best teams in the country for sustained periods.
The first month of recruiting action was exciting, but the calendar has turned
and like the May flowers brought on by the April shower, there is still plenty
of growing to be done.
