This article was written by our buddy Dan, @ThiccStauskas on Twitter, who is a sweetie pie but also a dangerous criminal who should not be interacted with under any circumstances.
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I was listening to Chapo Trap House one day during the run up to the 2020 election and something they said really resonated with me. I am going to paraphrase here, but the discussion topic was something along the lines of “Why are all of these Democratic presidential candidates so damned off-putting (besides Bernie Sanders of course)?” and the answer that they eventually landed on was: “In order to run for president, you have to believe that you should be president, which is a fundamentally insane thing to think about yourself.”
That stuck with me because I have, like most people, spent considerable time daydreaming about being president. To be clear, I would actually be great at it because I am a perfect sweetie with impeccable politics that everyone loves. But all joking aside, believing that you are worthy of wielding the power of The Sun in America’s nuclear arsenal is a level of narcissism that should get you put on an FBI Watch List. The rare instances when a president does not display this level of hubris are when we end up with some of our greatest leaders. FDR was constantly made aware of his humanity through his disability, and Abraham Lincoln was clinically depressed. These are the only two good presidents, I will not be answering questions at this time.
This is the sort of indecision and introspection that is demanded of elected leaders when democracy actually works. Politicians should always be questioning their decisions and deeply afraid of the consequences of their constituents’ discontent. The same is not true of football coaches.
College football coaches must be fearless Leaders of Men who are so self-assured and psychotically driven that they are able to rise up through the cutthroat ranks of the coaching profession, convince talented and much sought-after teenagers to buy wholesale into their vision, and prepare a hundred man-plus multimillion dollar organization to do battle against other, similarly armed programs that are competing for the exact same limited resource: championships. There is no room for democracy here. These are dictators and tyrants and quite frankly there is no alternative if you want to win football games. Try taking a vote on whether to go for it on fourth down or kick a long field goal. Winning football games requires decisive, unilateral action with military discipline and no questioning of authority.
This is true of every football program in America. Full stop. The men that run these programs are kings of their castles within the athletic department. The only thing stopping any coach from doing something like what Mel Tucker did is his own discretion and moral scruples, and that will never be enough to stop powerful men from doing bad things.
These athletic departments cannot rely on the discretion of Good Men. The uncomfortable reality is that even the best among us are capable of terrible things in our weakest moments and football coaches are by-and-large not the best among us.
It is incumbent on us, as fans, to hold the institutions that we root for accountable by… I guess, yelling at them online until they are so embarrassed that they have no choice but to act? That sounds ridiculous, and it is! But, increasingly it seems to be the only way that real change is affected by normal people who don’t give millions to their alma maters. Title IX and the Me Too movement has put at least some measure of fear in the administrators, coaches, and university presidents that would otherwise abuse their power to exploit the women over whom they hold workplace authority. But it is obviously not enough, because this keeps happening.
The only alternative is to stop being a fan, because I don’t care what team you root for, something like this is currently happening, already has happened, or will happen to your favorite team. It begs the question of whether it is morally correct to continue to support programs that do things like honor known enablers and abusers through statues and building names. But here’s the thing, I don’t have a choice. I couldn’t stop rooting for Michigan if I tried and chances are if you are reading this you feel the same way about your alma mater. All we can do is keep being hypocrites, yelling at Warde Manuel on Monday and cheering for Blake Corum on Saturday. If we, as people who care, stop yelling, that’s when they’ll stop caring what we think, and start exercising their power however they see fit.
The Football Part (Long Term):
Here’s the kicker in all of this: MSU will be better off in the long run without Mel Tucker. Even if we take him at his word that this was a consensual adult relationship, you are still talking about someone stupid enough to become romantically involved with a woman that his program paid to educate young men about sexual assault. That is, to be maximally charitable, a man who is not intellectually capable of running a college football program.
Let’s take a step back and view Tucker’s tenure at a macro level. He fell ass-backward into one of the best college running backs since Reggie Bush sitting on the bench at Wake Forest, as well as a handful of NFL players that happened to be laying around from the Dantonio Era, won a shitload of close games in 2021, and parlayed that into a mega-contract.
The red flags that were always there became clearer in 2022. Terrible clock management, bad gameplans, uninspiring coordinator hires, and a worrying number of blowouts to teams that the Spartans should have been at least competitive with. His recruiting approach never made sense, going after national recruits that were never going to choose the Spartans, and not taking enough high school players to supplement star players with adequate depth. His portal strategy was haphazard, taking many players that simply are not B1G caliber athletes.
This was not going to work, and MSU was going to be locked in for at least two more seasons. Just as well to rip the Band-Aid off now and avoid paying that buyout. His actions and his subsequent statements on the matter are those of a man who you should not feel sorry for losing. He’s Brady Hoke if Brady Hoke was also a piece of shit. (Note from Ryan: I think Brady Hoke is also probably a piece of shit)
The Football Part (Short Term):
Here’s the bad news: things are going to get worse before they get better.
Let’s take a quick inventory of the situation here: A very young, very inexperienced Spartans squad just lost their head coach and got slaughtered in a matchup in which the nation’s best passing offense was aimed squarely at their weakest position group heading into the season. The team can talk about how they won’t be distracted, but I promise you that they were, and who could blame them. Washington is a veteran team loaded to bear and a terrible matchup for MSU’s young secondary and lackluster pass rush. We saw a bloodbath in the Woodshed I mean Deep End. Ah ok I guess we’re not using that branding anymore.
From here, two things can happen: either the team rallies together to salvage a handful of wins against the middle class of the B1G… or the wheels come off and things get ugly against one of the nation’s hardest schedules. It is not hard to imagine the latter, especially since Saturday was extremely lopsided and players have surely started thinking about long-term career decisions. I wasn’t high on this team when they still had their head coach, and regardless of what I think of his abilities as a head man, they’d be better off in the short term if their program wasn’t decapitated without warning on two days’ notice. I’m lowering my internal season projection from 5 wins to 4, but hey, I am almost always wrong about this program.
After the season is where the true cratering begins. The 2024 class is already off to a bad start, and now that recruits know the current staff are lame ducks, it is very likely to be a total disaster. That’s just the reality of transition classes and this one will be especially bad unless they make a hire the day after the season ends and he brings some of his commits with him before signing day.
With Mel Tucker being fired, the portal is open to every player on the roster for 30 days regardless of graduate status. Brace yourself for a lot of attrition here. Many of the kids Tucker brought in over the last couple of classes were out-of-state and out-of-region prospects with little reason to stick around if they don’t know who their coach is going to be next season. Other programs have undoubtedly already been tampering with talented members of the 2022 and 2023 classes. Players like Bai Jobe, Andrew Depaepae, and Stanton Ramil – national recruits who MSU beat blue-blood suitors for – will have very tempting transfer offers from NIL-rich programs who narrowly missed out the first time around. Interim coach Harlon Barnett should be spending as much time as he can trying to convince his roster not to enter the portal at least until the season is over and a new coach is hired.
Final Thoughts:
So where does that all leave Michigan State Football? With 2023 looking like a lost season, attention turns to 2024. The 2020 and 2021 classes were full of busts and flameouts, and the 2022 and 2023 classes are likely to be picked over in the transfer portal. The 2024 class is almost certainly going to be bleak. The Spartans will enter an expanded B1G in 2024 with a bottom tier roster in the conference and a schedule that is only getting tougher.
This is a critical hire for Michigan State. The peak of the Dantonio Era was almost a full decade ago, and while their position in the sport is assured as a member of one of the Big Two conferences, their position within the B1G’s new power structure is very much up in the air. Who they hire and how much immediate success they have will likely determine whether MSU is competing for bowl berths or playoff berths for the next five to ten years.