Does the Tucker situation help or hurt MSU?
I know there’s another Tucker thread but I’m curious to hear some opinions. I’ve seen several Spartan fans say this is a blessing because it gets them out of his ridiculous contract. While I can see that point, I’m not sure I agree. Is this setting up for a legal battle between Tucker and MSU? Or is he just looking to get some settlement cash. Either way, it seems like they are in limbo for a while since they can’t fire him yet but everyone knows he’s gone. I imagine that would make it difficult to put a plan in place for the next coach. Thoughts?
September 12th, 2023 at 10:00 AM ^
Short term hurts, long term helps. IMO, Tucker isn't THE GUY who was going to lead MSU back to glory, so this gives them a shot to hire someone else who is. They'll probably have the usual transfer cost when a new coach comes in, but they don't have a huge amount of talent anyway, so if the new guy can recruit that will be a gain as well.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:07 AM ^
It helps if they make a good hire. Their last four football head coaches are Bobby Williams, John L. Smith, Dantonio and Tucker. The only one of those that worked out was also aided by Michigan self-destructing, which (knock on wood) is unlikely to happen again.
Their ability to hire a quality coach may be complicated by the outcome of the Tucker situation. If they end up having to settle for a large sum of money, are they still going to break the bank for the new guy?
September 12th, 2023 at 10:11 AM ^
The sparties seem convinced that Dantonio is going to lead them back to glory. They expect instant improvement from the team just because he'll be in the press box next game.
I want to ask them what makes them so sure they'll get 2010-2015 Dantonio and not 2016-2019 Dantonio, but it's really best not to engage with these people.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:41 AM ^
To be fair, if you were a Sparty fan it would be in your interest to not know anything about football.
September 12th, 2023 at 11:08 AM ^
It's a chicken and egg thing. To become a sparty fan, you must not know anything about football, but without knowing about football, how does one even become a fan?
September 12th, 2023 at 11:39 AM ^
The simple answer to that is one must love the green and white.
September 12th, 2023 at 11:23 AM ^
Dantonio lost 3 out of his last 4 to Michigan.
September 12th, 2023 at 12:45 PM ^
And he got out knowing that trend was not changing any time soon.
He was no longer recruiting as high level and Harbaugh had his number.
He got out knowing he was about to tarnish his legacy.
September 13th, 2023 at 9:02 AM ^
I don't think D'antoni hit the door because he saw what was happening. Didn't they run him out because of his season records towards the end of his career were getting worse with a 9 loss season and two 6 loss seasons?
Those dominating 11 and 12 win seasons came to a stop once Harbaugh got the train going. He's not going to change anything now.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:06 PM ^
TBF, it wasn't just a resurgent Michigan, it was also a solid Penn State, Wisconsin and Iowa, with a lot of B1G teams no longer being easy wins. The landscape had changes a lot.
September 12th, 2023 at 11:55 AM ^
The Larry Nassar matter was a heinous situation that is still ongoing with civil litigation. Now, Tucker comes across as someone whom you might not want to share his values with your son.
This can't help MSU as a university nor can it help from a recruiting standpoint. Tucker's comments yesterday where he throws everything against the wall in his attempt to play the victim didn't do very much to instill confidence in the man or the school.
This Sparty embrace of Dantonio is not going to do much when you simply don't have the talent to be competitive with the better programs in the B1G. I don't know why Dantonio decided to retire but it wasn't a departure where he went out with glowing results in recent years.
September 12th, 2023 at 12:57 PM ^
And they even trotted Izzo out there to sing his praises after knowing of the investigation lol.
September 12th, 2023 at 2:18 PM ^
You're getting at my sense of this: There's the school and its rep, and there's football. MSU was deeply damaged by the Nassar story, which people across the country absorbed and associate with the school. That one transcended most sports-related sexual violence stories because of the numbers hurt and because it reached across the country--and a popular Olympic sport--in terms of the number of women harmed. That one became a cause celebre. Recurring negative events associated with MSU don't help, and the number of school-related scandals really reaches to four or five now. When school, sports, and institutional ineptitude all merge and keep merging. . . ouch.
But a lot of people will be looking to football to help them feel good about their school now, to supply some redemption story--there's nothing a short-sighted, old school television and internet broadcasting institution will like better than if MSU can win some games and they can blubber about it. The overdog that gets humbled regularly by the neighboring institution always has emotional cogency.
So who gets hired will be important. If it's a caretaker coach at a cut-rate price, MSU could be down in the dumps for some time. If someone's willing to pony up huge money again, MSU's chances increase. But maybe not as much as the money might hope? MSU is operating--as various people here are pointing out--in a far less favorable recruiting environment than they were during Dantonio's heyday.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:20 AM ^
Correction: they were aided by Michigan, OSU, PSU self-destructing. Some of that is hyperbole, but how many coaching changes did those 3 programs have from about 2006-2015?
Michigan h/ad 3
PSU had 2-3 with a massive scandal
OSU had 1-2 if you include the interim coach + a smaller scandal
September 12th, 2023 at 10:27 AM ^
PSU, definitely. I don't think it's a coincidence that once Harbaugh and Franklin's programs got rolling, MSU declined.
I'm not even sure how good or bad Tucker is as a coach. That contract was ridiculous but his record there isn't that bad, considering he's had to compete in a brutal division.
The new coach won't have to deal with the East division anymore, but this conference is going to be pretty tough going forward.
September 12th, 2023 at 11:19 AM ^
Being out of the east is great but I am really unsure what the conference will feel like moving forward. Making the championship game - by whatever criteria - will clearly be an achievement, probably tantamount to what being a co-champ was pre 2011. But, how will different programs measure success? Will we brag about "top 4 finishes" in the Big Ten? We probably won't because we want top 5 finishes in the country. But I imagine for Minnesota and Rutgers, making it to the top third of the league will feel amazing, and being in the bottom half may be a true mark of failure.
September 12th, 2023 at 12:27 PM ^
It doesn't matter what division they are in or if they are in a division. Staee plays a one game schedule with 11 exhibition games. All that matters to them is if they are 1-0 or 0-1.
September 12th, 2023 at 1:18 PM ^
Tucker is 12-13 in the BigTen with a net negative of 210 points.
September 12th, 2023 at 1:21 PM ^
You can also add Mark Stoops at Kentucky and Fickell at Cincy. Both of those guys hit MSU's main recruiting area HARD at the same level of recruits MSU was previously able to get more easily. Hell, with Clink on Stoops' staff even we were losing out on some possibilities to Kentucky. But they really, really hampered MSU. So you had PSU and Michigan getting better and more stable, while MSU's talent level was becoming more difficult to maintain. And down Dantonio went.
September 12th, 2023 at 2:47 PM ^
There will be no divisions, but MSU is sitting right now where they MAYBE the 11th - 14th best program in the new BIG "10".
1 Tier - Michigan, OSU, Penn State, USC
1.5 Tier - Washington, Oregon
2nd Tier - UCLA, Wisconsin, Iowa
3rd Tier - Minnesota, Purdue, Maryland
4th Tier - MSU, Illinois, Nebraska
5th Tier - NW, Rutgers, Indiana
You could argue that MSU should be in tier 3, but given the current state of the program, I wouldn't buy it.
Point being is that MSU is staring down becoming even more lost in the weeds and becoming a non-factor. And the road to climb up to a Tier 2, let alone Tier 1.5 or higher, will become next to impossible. Just lost as an also ran for the immediate future...
September 12th, 2023 at 3:07 PM ^
I think I'd put them in the 2nd tier, ahead of Iowa and UCLA. They've fallen hard the last 2 years, but KW3 did make them a contender, and they, Wisconsin, and everyone in the first and first-and-a-half tier all have won a conference title game.
I'd also put Nebraska higher, FWIW. But I'm old and have a long memory. They will be a quality program at some point. They have more fans than anyone else in the 3rd tier down. Pre-Frost, they were actually a decent program (albeit fallen and not humble).
In my head, I imagine the Big Ten doing a promotion/relegation with a "Super 9" and a "Big 9", and the top 8 would be the 8 who'd won a conference championship game, and the 9th school would be UCLA or Iowa. Maybe we should split the conference in 1/3s instead, "Super6, Big6, Scrappy6"
Either way, I think looking at the current top 5 and thinking what the narrative was around those programs in 2020 - other than UGA, altho, somewhat, even UGA - and there are cycles in this sport. Not everyone can rise to the top, but the schools that can do and will. I don't like it, but MSU will be back.
September 12th, 2023 at 3:19 PM ^
As much as I'd like this to be true, there's no way MSU should be that low unless you believe this scandal will be absolutely devastating (and I don't see why it would be).
Since 2013, this is MSU compared to the five other teams in Tiers 3 and 4 plus Tier 2 UCLA COMBINED (6 teams total):
NY6 Bowls
- MSU: 4
- Other 6: 0
Conference Championships
- MSU: 2
- Other 6: 0
Wins vs OSU/Mich
- MSU: 8
- Other 6: 3
In addition, Michigan State's 2022 and 2023 recruiting classes outranked all 6 of those teams (and still outranked most of them in 2021, their recent nadir).
September 13th, 2023 at 9:23 AM ^
What does the last 10 years of msu success have to do with right now? Are you going to compare osu and Michigans success the past 10 years too? If thats the case Michigan would be in tier 1.5 or 2 according to your logic.
September 13th, 2023 at 12:34 PM ^
I think looking at the CFP era as a whole (2014-2023, 10 years) is relevant. And I'd absolutely put OSU ahead of us on the totality. You're right that we should have recency bias - and on that M is clearly top tier. But even just looking at recency, M, OSU, PSU and MSU have won conference title games and 3 of us have made the playoff, 2 have made multiple, 1 has won a game and won it all. Likewise, USC, Washington and Oregon have all won a conference title, 2 have made the playoff, 1 has won a CFP game. We put USC in the top tier not because of the last 10 years but because they've been a dominant force in the sport twice - in the 1970s and in the 2000s. MSU has never been to that height, has never commanded the Big Ten like M-OSU did in the 1970s and more recently (in our case, the 1985-2004, but with a gap in the mid '90s, in OSUs case, 2006-2021). But they have certainly been a regular contender for the Big Ten Title at times - under Dantonio most recently. Wisconsin can say that. Iowa cannot.
It's certainly just a way of looking at it - if we're looking at "right now!" then sure, MSU is down. But I think that's a very narrow way of looking at it. Minnesota hasn't mattered for 60 years, Indiana and Purdue are in that boat as well. MSU has reached the heights of the sport in that time. So yea, I don't think they're low tier because recruits today can actually remember a time when MSU was in the playoff.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:59 AM ^
To say that osu self-destructed between 20116-2015 is rich. I'd love for Michigan to self-destruct like that, where we have one 7-loss season and one 3-loss season and the other 10 seasons result in 0-2 losses, 10 division titles, 7 conference championships, 3 national championship appearances, 1 MNC (mythical national championship for the oldheads), and 5 major bowl wins (including the vacated Sugar Bowl).
Yeah, it sure would suck to self-destruct like that.
September 12th, 2023 at 11:11 AM ^
OSU didn't self destruct - they went from Tressel to Meyer, and even their interim coach is a pretty solid coach. I think from 2006-2021, they won a share of the conference/division every season except 2011. Dantonio showed up in 2007. PSU clearly did, M clearly did.
But we have to give Dantonio credit - he wasn't just barely beating M - he went 6-1 against Hoke and Rod, and only 1 of those wins was close. He was competitive with Urban Meyer, made the playoff and the Rose Bowl and hung with Wisconsin, Nebraska(!!) and OSU at the top of the Legends/Leaders era Big Ten. The Big Ten was weaker then but his program was strong. It wasn't until Harbaugh and Franklin came that MSU couldn't keep up and started to fall apart.
I think he's a jerk but he made them a solid program, probably their best since they won natties in the 1960s.
September 12th, 2023 at 12:11 PM ^
He did very well. I definitely agree that he is their best coach since the '60s.
But if Michigan and PSU hadn't fallen off, I think his program would have had a lower ceiling, going more like an 8-4/9-3 instead of contending for the league title (and even sneaking into the playoff!).
September 12th, 2023 at 1:33 PM ^
That's a big "if" though, right? He had 4 top ten finishes along with 3 big ten titles. I think Harbaugh has gotten to greater highs, but he's got 3 and 2, respectively. Every program goes through ups and downs - the AP Top 5 currently includes FSU, Texas, USC and Michigan - four schools that were national punchlines about arrogance and self inflated importance in 2020. In 2010, the same was said about Clemson and Georgia - and then Clemson gave up 70 to West Virginia. In 2003, it was Alabama, Penn State and Notre Dame. And today, it's Nebraska and A&M and maybe Florida. Every champion and contender has their window, and everyone - even OSU - will have their moment of humility.
IF Dantonio hadn't been around, do Rich Rod and Hoke look more competent? IF Urban was still at Florida, do they reach even higher highs? Does the Big Ten look even weaker, and become prey for the Pac12 instead of vice-versa? The hypotheticals are endless. But what did happen is, MSU stood toe to toe with Nebraska, Wisconsin, and even OSU from 2010-2015, and then beat Franklin's best team in 2017 (along with Harbaugh's worst non-Covid team) to maintain relevance for a bit longer. It sucks, both because it's MSU and because he seems like a real piece of work. But CFB doesn't really have a ton of role models. So yea, he's undoubtedly a good coach.
September 12th, 2023 at 4:47 PM ^
For most of Dantonio's heyday, Michigan and PSU were annual games for MSU but OSU often rotated off the schedule. If UM/PSU had been top 10 programs in addition to OSU, you're talking about multiple conference games per year where they'd have been at a clear talent disadvantage and I'm not sure they'd have broken through as a program. Not only is that probably an extra 1-2 losses per season, but maybe they then miss out on a few recruits they managed to get in this timeline, and they end up plateauing around an Iowa level.
In any event, it's hard to see them getting back to that anytime soon.
IF Dantonio hadn't been around, do Rich Rod and Hoke look more competent?
Eh, we had enough problems against the rest of our schedule. RR and Hoke were not going to be long for this job in any event.
September 12th, 2023 at 5:45 PM ^
I hear you on this, and I think the part about OSU falling off the schedule is valid - they didn't play them in 2010 when they got their first Big Ten 'ship, but did beat them in their Rose Bowl season and their CFP season - their two best seasons, by far.
But on us and PSU - someone could say "Harbaugh only got his because OSU's defense was down," or "the flu, the snow" or "MSU was down, as were annual x-overs Wisconsin and Nebraska." Those are all true - but also, M was undoubtedly the #3 team in the country the past 2 years, and it wasn't really that close. The reason MSU was down was because Harbaugh out-recruited, out-schemed, and got his players to out-play Dantonio. Michigan ended Nebraska's night party with heartbreak in 2021, and matched Wisconsin from 2016-2019 and then emphatically passed them in 2021. In short, those schools are down because we put them there to climb above them. Let them have their era - I don't like that they had it, and the guy who led it is toxic. But, it happened. It's in the past. Our time is now. Don't take the past away from them, and then we can fully appreciate our present.
September 12th, 2023 at 2:18 PM ^
Yes, Dantonio was beating shitty Michigan teams and (the aforementioned) capitalizing on the recruiting trail over Michigan and PSU during their dark days.
September 12th, 2023 at 2:10 PM ^
OSU didn't self destruct. They just went from elite to effin damn good. PSU and UM were lost in the wilderness.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:06 PM ^
BINGO
September 12th, 2023 at 5:46 PM ^
I don't want MSU to go after Lance Liepold, although if he's successful at Kansas lots of big programs are going to want him and MSU will have lots of competition.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:21 AM ^
Even Couch speculated that they slow rolled the investigation to mitigate a transfer portal flood before the start of this season.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:45 AM ^
I wonder, if there will be players who opt-out now to preserve this season of eligibility.
September 12th, 2023 at 11:51 AM ^
Short term hurts, long term helps.
I completely agree with this. Tucker wasn't/isn't the answer for MSU, so MSU was going to have to move on eventually. Tucker's contract made it impossible to do any time soon. This just brings the timeline forward, which is a long-term benefit to MSU.
There are always transition costs from a coaching change, but it's a good time for MSU to pay them now. Not a lot of big recruits at risk and the prospect of a poor W/L record - may as well start the transition now if the opportunity presents itself.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:00 AM ^
Coach Antonio (No D) coming back to save the day as assoc. head coach!
September 12th, 2023 at 10:01 AM ^
All depends on who they get next. If it's Jim Leonard, it helps. If it's someone like Narduzzi or matt campbell, I'd say it hurts. If they don't get this hire right, it could start a really dark period for msu with usc, ucla, oregon, and washinton all coming to town
September 12th, 2023 at 10:45 AM ^
I would take Narduzzi or Campbell over Leonard (or Tucker for that matter) all day long.
September 12th, 2023 at 11:30 AM ^
for Nard dog and Campbell i think the ceiling is low but the floor is high.
September 12th, 2023 at 4:56 PM ^
The national soup (the company and NFL sponsor) would probably pay Matt Campbell to not go anywhere near EL. Yes, I am being serious. The MSU brand is critically damaged.
September 12th, 2023 at 11:19 AM ^
It definitely depends on the size of the crater. Immediately it nukes their recruiting and roster management, so whoever comes in starts deep in the hole. While the timing for a coaching search is better starting in October than January or December, if the legal / admin fight gets messy they might not be able to do better this cycle than keeping an interim coach. What coach would want to walk in to that?
September 12th, 2023 at 11:41 AM ^
Depending on how their legal fight with Mel goes and the size of the eventual settlement, it will likely have significant impact on the amount of money they can offer the next coach.
September 12th, 2023 at 12:04 PM ^
I think these names (except *maybe* Narduzzi) oversell the attractiveness of that job. If you're an up and coming coach looking to take a step up, are you going to a program that's clearly poorly run at the AD level to a school with a ton of scandal and bad vibes, not to mention a brutal gauntlet of potential opponents with the likes of UM, OSU, PSU, USC, Oregon, etc. etc. in the hopper year after year?
It's like, why would Sherrone Moore take a G5/badP5 job this past summer when he can wait a year and get a way better offer?
MSU is more likely to land someone who flames out somewhere else and is looking for a landing spot on the way down.
September 12th, 2023 at 12:50 PM ^
There's also a reason Leonhard didn't get the Wisconsin job, and there were a number of people who felt like he was being less than forthright about the transition. It wasn't so much they didn't think he could handle it as much as his behavior was a bit immature.
I doubt Campbell is interested. Maybe Narduzzi? They'll start with an assistant from one of the top 10 teams right now. Garrett Riley, the USC OC, Georgia assistants, Texas OC, Tenn OC, Washington OC. Probably kick the tires on Sherrone Moore and Minter, as well as Brian Hartline.
September 12th, 2023 at 10:02 AM ^
In the short-term it may hurt a bit. Overall, it will be a positive development. Mel is, after all, a horseshit coach.
September 12th, 2023 at 11:36 AM ^
Yeah cutting Mel loose without having to pay a majority of his stupid ass contract is a win for Sparty. Now it can start a long dark period if they flub the next hire, or they could luck into a decent coach like they did with Dantanio and be fine. But for now, getting out from under Mel without losing tens of millions is a win for their future
September 12th, 2023 at 10:03 AM ^
There will be some chaos in the short term, but it will help them in the medium/long-term...assuming they hire the right coach.