Couch: Mel Tucker's firing is a sad ending to a thrilling and frustrating era of MSU football, leaving big decisions ahead

The Mel Tucker era officially ended Wednesday, a sad conclusion to a once-promising tenure, one that just three weeks ago still had some hope to it, even if no longer momentum.

Michigan State University fired its fourth-year football coach Wednesday, 10 days after suspending Tucker with no intention of ever bringing him back after the details of a Title IX sexual harassment investigation against him were revealed by USA Today. Athletic director Alan Haller announced the firing in a press release.

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What’s left of Tucker’s MSU story is likely to be as ugly as the university can stomach. It’ll either fight Tucker’s oncoming lawsuit to the bitter end — with Tucker appearing ready to go scorched earth to preserve a chunk of the remainder of his 10-year, $95 million contract — or take the PR hit and settle for a tolerable sum. There’s no perfect strategy.

Meanwhile, the program that Tucker left behind plays the rest of its season, minus the hope.

It stinks for everyone involved. Two years after MSU paid Tucker handsomely, perhaps naively fearing he’d be poached by another program, the man they hoped would be the next Nick Saban didn’t have the personal discipline to get through his fourth season. I still understand why MSU paid Tucker like a rising star — the scars from the regret over losing Saban more than two decades earlier and MSU’s hunger for greatness in football, led to a frenzy of excitement and panic that was perhaps unavoidable. There are lessons here. It’s hard to see them in the moment.

That 2021 season, Tucker’s second season, was magic, the first eight games especially. It was more than Kenneth Walker, though without Walker MSU would have won maybe 6 regular-season games instead of 10. That team — also with two soon-to-be NFL wide receivers — had a hunger and resilience to it. The Miami and Michigan games will be remembered forever, even if those wins are now slightly tarnished, as they were on the way to nothing. Tucker’s program back then exuded competence in ways it hasn’t since.

And yet, there was still some evidence of progress all the way through the first two games of this season — largely in Tucker’s two post-pandemic recruiting classes, now sophomores, redshirt freshmen and true freshmen.

How many of those players stick around will largely determine how successful the next coach is early on, no matter who it is.

On that front, there are decisions to be made. With Tucker now fired, the transfer portal is open for the next 30 days to all MSU players. If they jump in, other schools can begin contacting them, even if they keep playing for the Spartans. The portal will be open to them again for 45 days at the end of the season — as it will for every player in college football — so unless they’re sure they want to leave, there’s no point in using the portal now. It’ll just add to the distractions. But these are 19- and 20-year-olds. So we’ll have to see what they do.

More pressing for players who aren’t sure MSU is their future or that they want this season to count against their eligibility is the decision whether or not to stop playing after four games to preserve a redshirt year. There are 27 scholarship players at MSU that still have a redshirt season available. Ten of them have played four games already this season, meaning, as soon as they play a single down at Iowa this Saturday, this year counts.

Those 10 are some of the most consequential names in the program — for this season and, ideally, beyond: Sophomore defensive backs Dillon Tatum and Malik Spencer, freshman DB Chance Rucker, senior DB Angelo Grose, sophomore defensive end Zion Young, freshman linebacker Jordan Hall, sophomore receiver Tyrell Henry, senior wideout Montorie Foster, senior running back Jordan Simmons and junior long snapper Hank Pepper.

In all, there are 57 MSU scholarship players who haven’t used their one-time transfer and could have eligibility remaining, 32 of them from outside the Midwest. Their only tie to MSU is how happy they are in East Lansing.

The key to limiting the pain and length of the program build will be how many of those guys, especially from the touted younger classes, MSU is able to keep in the fold.

There’s still a lot to win or lose over the next three months in that regard.

And big decisions to make about who leads this program next — by an administration that doesn’t have a president and whose board of trustees should probably be locked in a closet until this is over. It’s hard to imagine how their meddling would benefit the process ahead.

There will be coaches who are hesitant to take the job without a president in place. And it's unlikely there will be one in place in time.

More than anything, MSU has to decide what it wants to be as a football program before it decides who it wants to hire. It can’t get this wrong. The health of the football program means so much to the psyche of that place. The right fit is essential. Someone who understands the institution, its strengths and limitations.

It didn’t help Tucker that he largely cut his teeth in college football coaching at Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia. He might have taken the job thinking he could turn MSU into one of those programs. He was mistaken and found himself running into frustrations, even as MSU’s administration and donors stretched to meet his needs.

For that reason, Tucker was probably never going to be a lifer at MSU — though he did have a contract that said otherwise.

He’ll be remembered as much for getting that contract as anything else he accomplished at MSU. And also remembered for how he lost it.

FROM SEPT. 10: Couch: Mel Tucker has likely coached his last game at Michigan State

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Michigan State football: Mel Tucker firing leaves big decisions ahead