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Rising star did serious “soul searching” while passed over repeatedly for
NFL head coaching jobs
USA TODAY
December 28, 2021
ATLANTA
– Mel Tucker is here now.
For a long time. This is the destination job, as Tucker declared it when
he arrived at Michigan State in February 2020. If Tom Izzo can put Sparty on
the map as a basketball hotbed (post-Magic), then Tucker can surely envision a
football powerhouse,
And lo
and behold, it took less
than one full season for the big donors and power brokers to demonstrate faith
with a 10-year, fully-guaranteed, $95 million contract extension that sends a
message that they won’t let Tucker get away like his mentor, Nick Saban,
did years ago in bolting from East Lansing to LSU.
But this
wasn’t always the destination job. Tucker spent 10 years in the NFL, when he
became the youngest defensive coordinator in Cleveland Browns history, had a
stint as an interim coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars and for a spell was on
the circuit as a candidate for an NFL head coaching gig.
Tucker, 49, may have received the
largest contract extension in college football history at the time in less than
one full season at Michigan State, but no NFL team ever saw fit
to put him in charge. His NFL experience was so familiar to the legion of Black
coaches who put in time, paid dues, prepared for the ultimate promotion, then
saw themselves passed over for white candidates with lesser resumes.
With another NFL hiring cycle looming –
against the backdrop of just four Black coaches hired for the 27 openings over
the previous four cycles – Tucker’s case resonates for what it might have
become on the pro level.
“I
actually had to do some soul-searching when I was in the NFL,” Tucker told USA
TODAY Sports during an exclusive interview as the Spartans (10-2) prepared for
a Peach Bowl matchup against Pitt (11-2) on Thursday night. “I said, ‘Listen,
you have to be OK with yourself as a person if you never become a head
coach.’ I told myself that. Because I’m sitting there looking at guys that I
coached with or that I knew that were head coaches. It was, ‘I can do that.’
“I was
ready to be a head coach many, many years ago. When I interviewed for the
Browns job in 2008, I firmly believed I could be an NFL head coach. Then they
hired Eric Mangini.”
Mangini
lasted two years and produced a 10-22 record. Tucker was reminded that in 2012
he lost out to Mike Mularkey for the Jaguars job. Mularkey was 2-14 in his one
season.
“People
always go, ‘Well, we want someone with experience.’ How the hell do you get
that?" Tucker said. "It takes one person to say 'Yes, we’re going to
take a chance on this guy.’ But I can remember sitting there saying, ‘No matter
how good of a coach I am, I may never get that opportunity.’ “
Tucker’s soul-searching and the specter of
racial barriers is hardly new. I’ve heard so many Black coaches express similar
sentiments for decades, while hiring patterns often reflect the frustration
that many experience. Tucker ultimately went back to the college level, the
option that Herm Edwards (Arizona State) took in 2018 and Hue Jackson
(Grambling) followed this year after not getting another NFL crack.
Tucker
knows. It’s difficult for any coach from any hue to land a head coaching job in
the NFL or at a major college. But he can surely relate to respected,
passed-over Black coaches such as Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy
and Bills defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier. He wonders, too, how Steelers
defensive backs coach Teryl Austin (who previously coordinated a top-five
defense) can just fall off the radar after once being viewed as a hot head coaching
candidate.
“I’ve
studied everything,” Tucker said, alluding to hiring patterns. “I asked a lot
of questions. I watched how guys got jobs and I would trace it back. ‘How’d
this guy get his job?’ You’d see, ‘He knew this guy,’ or ‘He was a grad
assistant there,’ or ‘He knew the AD.’ I watched how all that happened and I
realized I can’t hire myself. Becoming a head coach, especially as a Black
coach, is like catching lightning in a bottle.”
Tucker, who grew up in Cleveland
Heights, Ohio, has coaching in his DNA. His father, Mel Sr., who is enshrined
in the Sports Hall of Fame at the University of Toledo, was his first coach –
in Little League, basketball, at home and then some – and instilled
“old-school” principles. Yet it wasn’t until Tucker realized that he wouldn’t
make it as a pro football player following his college career as a defensive
back at Wisconsin, that he had enough of a bug to pursue a coaching career.
The
first stop was, ironically, Michigan State, where Saban hired him in 1997 as a
grad assistant. Tucker also worked on Saban’s staffs at LSU and Alabama, and
along the way took his advice to seek NFL experience on his resume (as
Saban himself did before winning six national championships).
Tucker,
though, said he never thought he’d coach in the NFL for 10 years, seeing
himself as better suited to mold young men, on and off the field. He stayed in
the NFL longer than originally projected, he admits, thinking he was close to
landing a head coaching job. Saban, nonetheless, was spot-on about the value of
NFL experience.
“There’s
a lot of (expletive) that happens in the NFL,” said Tucker, who had stints with
the Browns, Jaguars and Bears. “It’s rough. Especially if you’re not in winning
franchises. It’s cutthroat. It’s rugged. And it’s long.”
Tucker, who won national championship
rings as an assistant at Ohio State and Alabama, landed his first head
coaching job at Colorado in 2019. He stayed in Boulder for just one season
(5-7) before jumping to Michigan State. It just so happened that his charge to
establish a new culture was greeted by the pandemic and a social justice
movement sparked by the death of George Floyd.
What did
Tucker learn about himself amid that challenge?
“It
reinforced what I already knew: I was prepared for the job,” he said. “As a
coach, stuff is always happening. You have to lead. And you cannot lead unless
people know where you stand. ‘Here’s how I feel about George Floyd. Here’s how
I feel about civic engagement. Here’s how I feel about COVID. Here’s how I feel
about the way football should be played. Here’s how I feel about the health and
safety of the players and coaching staff.’"
Tucker
and his new program have rolled with the punches well enough to land in a New
Year’s Six bowl game and, of course, for him to land the security of a long,
massive contract. In 2022, only new LSU coach Brian Kelly will
top the contract for Tucker in terms of total value at a
public school. Tucker insists the deal won’t change his mindset. Of
course, he still wants to win national championships … especially since he
won’t be chasing Super Bowl glory.
“I had a
good contract before the extension,” Tucker said. “So, it doesn’t change
anything. But what it has done is raise the bar. And I think Michigan State is
seen maybe in a different light now as we aspire to be a Tier 1 program.”
Achieve
that and Tucker would certainly prove that Michigan State’s win is the NFL’s
loss.
