Mel Tucker is all over the place and Michigan State football's direction is unclear

At a time when Michigan State football is obscured by a cloud of uncertainty, Mel Tucker has sowed even greater doubt by delivering mixed messages, presenting competing ideas and contradicting himself. It has become a bad habit for a coach in Year 4 of a regime that alarmingly still appears to be in draft mode with no defined trajectory.

Tucker’s interview with the Lansing State Journal’s Graham Couch further illustrated the vexing lack of continuity in his public comments and actions. In that conversation, the Spartans coach shared his thoughts on the factors preventing MSU from becoming one of the top programs in college football, pointing to internal deficiencies that have had a negative effect on his ability to acquire talent. He complained about the infrastructure around him and the inadequate investment in players’ name, image and likeness. Most took it as a not-too-subtle plea for more, more, more.

And yet?

“The commitment is here, the resources are here, the want-to, the leadership is here. Everything we need is here right now to get done what we need to get done.” Those were Tucker’s words on the day he was hired in February 2020.

It’s unclear if he ever believed they were true after it came to light in July that some people discouraged Tucker from accepting the MSU job when his predecessor, Mark Dantonio, abruptly retired. “You go into the conference eighth or ninth walking in the door,” Tucker remembered those skeptics telling him then. “You have no facilities.”

Tucker volunteered that anecdote at Big Ten media days this summer when explaining why his program is still a work in progress. Yet a few minutes before, he was rather emphatic when he said his goal this season is to “win every game on our schedule.” Should that also be the expectation for fans, considering Tucker claimed his current team has more talent from top to bottom than any other he has coached in East Lansing, including the one that won 11 times in 2021?

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It’s hard to make that determination because Tucker continues to traffic in ambiguity as he has throughout a tenure riddled with inconsistency in both concept and execution.

This is a coach who came to East Lansing intent on transforming the Spartans into a “meat-and-potatoes” outfit devoted to playing a “tough, hard-nosed, physical” brand of football that, in his words, is “not pretty.” Yet he then turned around and sold high school prospects on extravagance and excess.

The contrasting imagery didn’t make much sense and caused people on the outside to wonder what defines Tucker’s program — the brawn, grit and “keep chopping” mantra he espouses or the glitz, flash and cool factor he tries to project. Frankly, none of it was evident last fall, when MSU was mired in a four-game losing streak and wobbling toward a 5-7 record. The Spartans lacked both style and substance. During that miserable period, when fan unrest peaked, Tucker acknowledged he didn’t expect “unconditional support from anyone, ever.”

So, why then, with the remnants of that bad season still visible, should he presume school donors will be eager to open their checkbooks again when the millions already raised for an upgraded football complex and Tucker’s gargantuan contract extension have yet to produce many positive returns?

This isn’t how the world works, as Tucker knows. In his line of work, it’s cutthroat and results-oriented with a “win now” mandate.

“As we’ve talked about, it's a production business,” Tucker said last October. “It's all about what have you done for me lately? What have you done for me today? Not last year or two years ago or five years ago.”

As he has reiterated time and again, MSU must constantly validate its worth. He calls it “prove-it mode,” and he told anybody listening his program is always in it.

But as of late, the Spartans haven’t shown much. Since Tucker led them to a euphoric victory over Michigan in October 2021, they are 8-9 and have suffered demoralizing defeats to Ohio State, Minnesota, Indiana, and yes, their in-state rival. The mojo has faded to the point that MSU is picked to finish fifth in its division and is now spinning its wheels along the recruiting trail as well. So far, the Spartans have assembled a 2024 class ranked 52nd in 247Sports’ index and slotted below 14 of the 18 teams in the expanded Big Ten set to take shape next year.

Tucker implied to Couch these struggles can be attributed to the MSU community’s delayed entry into the NIL space that often influences the college choices of elite prospects. But maybe they also stem from the Spartans’ failures on the field, the steady turnover at the top of Tucker’s recruiting department and an iffy track record sending players to the NFL.

To that last point, the only member of the defense drafted off any of Tucker’s MSU rosters is Ameer Speed, a transfer cornerback who earned his shot, in part, because he went back to his original school to conduct his tryout at Georgia’s pro day. In the face of these uncomfortable truths, Tucker has been quick to remind everyone of the shallow talent pool he inherited from Dantonio, which caused him and his staff to play “catch up,” as he put it.

But he still was charged with coaching and developing Dantonio’s signees, and many of them helped him achieve his best single-season record two years ago. To now highlight the lack of NIL financing as the primary reason the Spartans are treading water shifts the attention away from the other problems that have surfaced under his watch. Besides, Tucker once declared, “If you can't recruit at Michigan State, you probably can't recruit.” That signaled to everyone there were no excuses, which fell in line with the last of the five core values Tucker said were central to his program: Accountability.

After reading his comments in the LSJ, it seems Tucker isn’t adhering to that principle or his past statements. Instead, he is absolving himself of some responsibility and passing the buck, blaming MSU’s shortcomings on what he doesn’t have rather than acknowledging all that he has managed to squander. That, too, is becoming a bad habit.

Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @RainerSabin.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Mel Tucker is sowing greater doubt about Michigan State football