It was unnaturally hot in East Lansing, Mich., Monday, with the thermometer topping out at a muggy 81 degrees. This was after a run of temperatures in the 70s in preceding days, allowing Michigan State students who spend months in layered clothing to maintain their summer attire a little longer while scootering around campus. Everyone knows that the cold is inevitably coming, so they’ll giddily ride this warm wave for now.
That also is the corresponding mood surrounding Spartans football, which has a perfect record nobody saw coming. At 6–0 after a 2–5 COVID-19 mulligan season, Michigan State is the surprise team of college football. The Spartans are good and the Spartans are fun, two things that have rarely happened simultaneously at a program traditionally devoted to the flairless combination of rugged defense and low-octane offense.
Like the weather, this is a hot streak to embrace for as long as it lasts.
Mel Tucker, currently the leading candidate for Big Ten and national Coach of the Year honors, is wary amid the euphoria. At his press conference Monday, Tucker spoke in a voice so soft that at times you had to strain to hear him, measuring his words and largely avoiding the celebratory zeitgeist currently surrounding his program. Tucker has the only Power 5 conference team in the U.S. that has won three road games by 17 or more points, but he’s not here to declare dominance. “We’re still waiting to play a complete game,” he nearly whispers.
That’s how coaches tend to be: preoccupied with the flaws they see on film and in practice; expecting the next opponent (in this case, Indiana) to play its best game of the season; on guard against ruinous effects of self-satisfaction. There is a reason Nick Saban calls external praise “rat poison,” and Tucker coached under Saban at Alabama in 2015 and then Saban protégé Kirby Smart at Georgia from ’16 to ’18. He’s not going to stand at a podium and take that bait.
Tucker was a bit more relaxed after the press conference, allowing himself a few smiles and even some laughter. Inside the locker room at Spartan Stadium, the 49-year-old former defensive back sat on a counter with his legs dangling—not the body language of a guarded man. Wearing gray slacks and a polo shirt, his feet covered in bright green socks and Nike hightops, you could sense the competing characteristics his players often mention: intensity softened by an interpersonal warmth.
He is “having a blast” watching his second Michigan State team take off, validating his 2020 hire at what looked like an inflated price of $5.5 million a year after a single 5–7 season at Colorado. But the grind cannot stop, or even slow down, now.
Two of Tucker’s favorite hobbies, grilling and golfing, have been shelved during the season. Brisket and birdies take time, and there is none to spare now. Even the golf swing simulator he put in his basement has gone unused, though he’s contemplating breaking out the clubs down there “to let off some steam.”
As surprised as the outside world has been by Michigan State, Tucker did sense this breakthrough coming in August. After scoring several coups through the transfer portal and having a relatively normal offseason to build and bond his team, the signs were there in the Spartans’ second scrimmage of preseason camp. “I knew we have enough to get the job done,” Tucker says.
Michigan State’s new athletic director, Alan Haller, remembers something else from a preseason scrimmage. He remembers watching Tucker shake every player’s hand as they came off the field at Spartan Stadium. “He connects with the players individually,” Haller says. “I think they’re really rallying together to play for him and this staff. It’s an interesting culture, and a lot of that starts with Mel.”
Starting with Mel wasn’t the master plan for Michigan State as it entered life after Mark Dantonio in February 2020. After years of great work, Dantonio let the program atrophy around him, stubbornly refusing to part ways with assistant coaches who were no longer performing at a high level. His last two seasons were 7–6 slogs that underscored how offensively obsolete the Spartans had become.
But Dantonio didn’t ride off into the sunset in a timely manner, further harming the program he painstakingly built. He didn’t announce his retirement until Feb. 4, 2020, waiting around to collect a hefty retention bonus and shortening the window for his successor to get started on a rebuilding job. Michigan State went hard after Cincinnati’s Luke Fickell, who has close ties to Dantonio, but five days later Fickell opted to stay with the Bearcats.
Michigan State’s search redirected toward Tucker, who had been a graduate assistant at the school in 1997 and ’98. He had originally rejected MSU’s overtures, even tweeting on Feb. 8 that he was committed to Colorado. From there, Tucker honored a series of previously scheduled CU fundraising commitments and radio appearances—even though Michigan State had come back to him and he was now willing to listen.
It became a messy exit. But Michigan State brass made a huge offer after becoming convinced during a three-hour interview at a Boulder hotel that Tucker was the man for the job.
Haller, then an assistant AD, was joined in that meeting by MSU athletic director Bill Beekman and deputy AD Jennifer Smith. He remembers Tucker arriving with not just a thick binder of plans, but one with pages and file tabs specifically headed “Michigan State.”
“It wasn’t one of those interviews where you could rinse-repeat for another head coaching interview,” Haller says. “It was specific to MSU. He was as prepared as anyone I’ve ever seen in an interview. He had a plan together, a staff he wanted to hire, the salary pool number he needed.
“He said, ‘Alan, I really believe we can win a national championship there at some point.’ He didn’t even talk about a Big Ten championship. I was like, ‘Wow, O.K.’ He helped me dream bigger.”
From there, Tucker embarked on a washout of a debut year. Starting way behind to begin with, COVID-19 shut down everything within a month of his arrival in East Lansing. Taking over a program in transition and without an adequate offseason of preparation, that losing season did at least have two distinct high points: a victory over hated rival Michigan and an upset of 5–0 Northwestern, the eventual Big Ten West champion.
“How he approached last year has helped the success this year,” Haller says. “He didn’t create excuses. He started early [with the] foundation of no excuses.” Foundation laid, the next step was talent acquisition. Michigan State went out and won what has become the instant-impact battleground of college football: the transfer portal.
