Where did the $95M Mel Tucker is paid to "rebuild" MSU narrative come from?

They’ve accepted reality. 

I predicted MSU would not meet the 8-win over/under number.  Last season they had a generational type RB in Kenneth Walker fall into their laps through the portal, because of course.  This year they don't have that.  They have mediocre talent at most positions and are poorly coached on top of it.  But I give them credit for trying hard.  Make no mistake though, Michigan best be ready for an extreme amount of effort from MSU.  Watch your limbs in the scrums and CBs need to bat down those 30-yard Thorne rainbow prayer throws to the sidelines.  Take away the quick release prayers from Thorne and their offense will be reduced to a nothing burger.

If you are still blaming Dantonio in year 3, there's a problem. I personally hope Tucker is there a long time. 

A few of my Sparty friends were predicting a minor step back in the overall record but "The team will be better overall because of #TuckComing."  This was the narrative I heard over and over again in August.

Today?  They are only shaking their heads, and starting to realize the doom and gloom the program is heading towards and are afraid that Tuck my not even be able to hold together his current recruiting class.....

They are only hoping that we are pig headed and try and run 60 times Saturday.  Not because they think their run D is good, it has more to do with the fact their Pass D is pathetic.  Almost as bad as Iowa's offense.

From the school that gave us weird guys

Fuck little bro. And who cares about Mel Tucker and narratives. Just enjoy their decline. Hopefully Michigan delivers an OSU type of MSU beat down. 

They like to say we make a big deal over Tucker's contract, because who really cares how much he makes or who pays his salary. Well, they brought up Harbaugh's salary quite often in the past when he was not living up to our high expectations. The difference, however, is that JH had proven himself at Stanford and San Francisco. Tucker had lost more games than he won his first two years as a head coach, and making him the 2nd or 3rd highest paid head coach in the country based on one good season was a huge risk. His agent used LSU as leverage to obtain a huge guaranteed contract for a coach who barely had more wins than losses after 3 whole years as a head coach. Better now to say it wasn't desperation, but was instead a long term rebuilding investment.

MSU had taken a step back toward the end of Dantonio's run but a decent part of that was because OSU, PSU, and UM were all back to their historical averages in terms of talent and productivity.  I looked this up at some point but when MSU was winning 10+ games consistently (2010-2015 then won 11+ 5 out of 6 years) both UM and PSU won 10+ exactly twice (UM in 2011 and in 2015).  After 2015 Michigan and PSU combined for 10+ wins 6 times (and counting) while MSU has 2 such seasons, both of which were pretty flukey (2017 they went 10-3 by going 5-1 in 1-score games and in 2021 we all remember how that played out).  MSU filled a power vacuum over that period and when the perennial talents around them recovered it was game over.  

But Mel Tucker also hasn't really done much to rebuild them from that dip; his recruiting has been fine but they're not recruiting the region particularly well.  Over the last 2 classes (so 2022 and 2023 since COVID sort of threw off recruiting the first year) he's got 13 guys from the Midwest...and 17 kids from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Texas.  Michigan isn't any great shakes locally but they've historically been able to recruit well across the country; this is relatively new territory for MSU and we'll see if it works out.  Absolutely NIL has made it viable to get kids from elsewhere but it still feels like Tucker is trying to run a program doesn't match what they're good at (getting kids locally who feel slighted by the bigger schools and then turn into solid college players as upperclassmen).  

And all offseason I heard "Mel Tucker doesn't want to build through the portal" and yet he still took a fair number of transfers over the past 2 years to fill in holes that he, in theory, should have recruited to address.  Their offensive line has been terrible for 3 years now and yet he's only recruited 7 offensive linemen in 2 years and most of them were lower-rated kids or JuCos.  Similarly his secondary has struggled and yet they're still trotting out transfers instead of letting their younger recruits break thru, if they could, and get some meaningful playing time.  My sense is that Tucker has always viewed MSU as a stopover and so is trying to win as many games as possible each year regardless of sustainability.  It's why he took a bunch of RB transfers again and hoping to find another Walker.  I suspect that he'll keep pushing the narrative of "the cupboards are bare" for a year or two but MSU is going to settle into their spot as the #3/#4 best team in the East and at some point Tucker will either leave or one of their rich donors (who totally is on the hook for the full buyout and that's why MSU is fighting so hard to hide those contract terms because they don't want to let everyone else know how awesome they are and how cool and rich they are) will push someone to eat that buyout and they'll move on.

Part of Build Back Bettef

He gets paid that to beat Michigan... That's the only reason.

Beat MSU.

This can all be summed up with the word "copium"

To be fair, I believe myself and many on the board felt Dantonio's recruiting was going down hill towards the end.  I remember chipping to my MSU friends that Harbaugh had turned the corner and would be dominating since MSU recruiting was garbage.

But that's not a "rebuild", that's a makeover.   When Harbaugh came in, he had to strip the house down to the studs and build it back up.  Tucker is just painting the walls and adding a couple throw pillows to the couch.

I am Henri Ennui, the French otter of indifference.

The further MSU gets away from Dantonio, the worse the program will be. Similar to Urban and OSU but the decline is more profound because I could coach OSU and still win 10/11 games a year. 

Tuck already came.  He's shooting blanks now.

Enjoy 10 years of bad to mediocre football and/or a huge buyout sharty. 

$95mm and ten years for a .500 career head coach with 2 wins over UM (1 in a Covid year), is so on brand for little brother.

Is "Dumper Fire" the Sparty equivalent to "Cooler Pooper"?

They want to matter so badly.

Before the season, Spartan fans felt that Tucker was Nick Saban 2.0, and it was 10+ wins a year.  The rest of us told them that last year was a statistical freak show (near-Heisman RB transfer + outgained in half their wins) and that they didn't project to do that again.  They ignored that and Tucker got paid.

Now that they're playing like butt, some of the more rational ones are accepting the "statistical freak show" analysis but tagging on the "well, we're rebuilding, we're going to keep getting better" and still saying they see an upward trend.  Which... okay.

Makes sense he was hired to rebuild, look at what he did at Colorado, he rebuilt them back into Colorado.

I still believe that the slide began with Narduzzi leaving. Since then it's been like the proverbial couch on fire; rolling downhill igniting dumpsters along the way.

Dantonio had success because he had a hand from his pal Tressel, who funneled all the plan B Ohio guys to MSU, that normally went to us.   Once Tressel was gone and that pipeline dried up, they went south a bit.  Tucker came in to recruit with the bigs like Michigan, and he's been doing it... but apparently he cannot coach so well and their record is showing it. 

Meyer came in and ended it.