Mel Tucker

Extremely weird and disturbing story out of East Lansing this morning.

The background here is that after the 2021 season MSU signed Tucker — who has had one good season as a head coach — to a really insane contract: $95 million over ten years, with all of it guaranteed.

At this point, MSU would love to fire Tucker for cause, because that contract is a massive albatross for the entire athletic department and the university as a whole.

As to the specifics of this scandal:

(1) EVEN IF YOU ACCEPT TUCKER’S VERSION as 100% true, there’s a strong argument for firing him for cause. For a married man to have “consensual” phone sex with a rape victim who he knows BECAUSE her status as an advocate for other rape victims has led her to be an independent contractor/vendor for MSU (and while on a university business trip) is just a gross — in every sense — abuse of his position at the school. Again that’s IF you accept his version as 100% true.

(2) In the current political environment, they HAVE to fire him. I think this would be true if he went 11-2 again last season. The tricky thing now is, do they let him coach through the October 5/6 hearing, suspend him until then, fire him immediately, or try to make the whole thing go away by settling? My guess is that they’ll suspend him, and then fire him immediately after the the Title IX office issues its findings after the hearing. (A settlement now looks too much like a coverup, especially in the wake of the Larry Nassar fiasco).

This whole thing is a microcosm of what a grotesque mess big time college football has become.