Mel Tucker's lasting legacy: Michigan State football, Ohio State still appear miles apart

EAST LANSING — When the final analysis of the Mel Tucker era is conducted in the near future, the conclusions drawn won’t be pretty.

By and large, it will be deemed a failure marked by illusory highs, depressing lows, unfulfilled promises and grave shortcomings.

The sad truth of it all was revealed annually to the public by Michigan State football’s next opponent, Ohio State. The Buckeyes exposed Tucker’s Spartans as an inferior team that didn’t belong in their same class, crushing them by an average margin of 39 points in their last three encounters.

This Saturday, OSU, No. 3 in the US LBM Coaches Poll and No. 1 in the College Football Playoff rankings, is favored by Vegas oddsmakers to beat sub-.500 MSU by at least four touchdowns, offering another reminder that the gap between the two teams Tucker vowed he’d close still remains disturbingly wide.

Before he was fired in September following the public revelation of a sexual harassment claim made against him, Tucker’s doomed tenure was scarred by the lopsided results against the Buckeyes and the ugly warts they unveiled for everyone to see.

The 56-7 defeat in 2021 was the most alarming considering it came after news broke that Tucker was on the verge of signing a 10-year, $95 million contract extension that would make him one of the highest-paid coaches in college football.

LOOKING AHEAD: Michigan State football: What we learned vs. Nebraska, what to watch at No. 3 Ohio State

At the time the deal was struck, Tucker was hailed as a rising star who had a knack for beating Michigan. He won his first two games against the Wolverines, including a thrilling 37-33 victory two years ago that marked the apex of the program’s remarkable rise from the ashes. The conquests over U-M infused MSU with confidence and proved it had the edge in its rivalry with the Wolverines.

“I feel like our kids since I’ve been here believe that we can beat the school down the road when we play them,” offensive line coach Chris Kapilovic said Tuesday. “There’s no doubt in their mind.”

But, Kapilovic noted, that wasn’t necessarily what he sensed from MSU before its matchups with Ohio State.

“I just felt like there is a difference there,” he said. “I feel like (when) we’ve played the team in Columbus, I don’t know if everybody, like, believed, you know what I am saying? They had to see it happen.”

As Kapilovic knows all too well, it never did during Tucker’s 43 months in East Lansing despite his zealous desire to narrow the chasm that separated Ohio State from MSU. The main difference between the two teams, Tucker concluded, was talent. He made that call after the humiliating loss to OSU two years ago, when C.J. Stroud flambéed the Spartans’ secondary with six touchdown passes before halftime. Better players and improved depth would give MSU a fighting chance against the mighty Buckeyes, Tucker reasoned.

“We're going to recruit like crazy," he said. “We're just gonna be relentless in doing that, and we're built to do that.”

For a short time, it seemed as if Tucker would make good on that pledge. A conga line of big-name prospects queued up to take visits to East Lansing the ensuing offseason and there was a buzz around the program that hummed throughout the summer.

As Kapilovic said, “We’ve always been trying to recruit against the best and recruit the best players. That’s always been our mission.”

But the Spartans often did not hit their targets, watching the prospects they coveted go elsewhere. Eventually, the burst of hype around the Spartans dissolved before it was completely snuffed out by OSU last fall in a 49-20 romp that confirmed there was still an enormous gulf between the two programs.

"I have some ideas on how to close the gap," Tucker said after the loss. "But now is not the time to talk about it."

He delayed the conversation until the following summer, mere weeks before his tenure came to its unceremonious end. In an interview with the Lansing State Journal, Tucker remained convinced the Spartans would struggle to compete with teams like Ohio State if they didn’t strengthen their roster and become more active in the NIL space.

It seemed a loser’s lament considering his predecessor, Mark Dantonio, scored two wins over the Buckeyes in a three-year span despite a massive talent deficit compared to OSU. The last of those victories, in 2015, was particularly impressive, considering that Urban Meyer fielded a team with 53 blue-chip players — 35 more than Dantonio had at his disposal.

“I know what it is to go down, compete and play hard against these guys,” said interim coach Harlon Barnett, who was a Dantonio assistant back then. “They're beatable guys just like anybody else. We're going to go down with the mindset to go attack them and get a win. That's my mindset, it will never change.”

As both a Spartan lifer and the leader of a 3-6 team, Barnett has the feistiness of an underdog. His former boss, Tucker, didn’t fully embrace that same mentality after working at blue-blood programs like Georgia, Alabama, LSU and, yes, Ohio State.

Tucker pictured MSU one day rubbing elbows with them while competing for the sport’s biggest prizes. But the demoralizing defeats to the Buckeyes reinforced that the Spartans remained far outside the frame. That MSU couldn’t get closer is one of the depressing realities of the Tucker era. Against all odds, Barnett will try to propel MSU within striking distance Saturday.

It won’t be easy. But Barnett, unlike Tucker, has seen first-hand that it is possible.

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

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: This big failure by Mel Tucker looms over Michigan State football now