DotComp: A day of anger, sadness and relief for Michigan State, amid Mel Tucker’s apparent demise
East Lansing, Mich. – It struck me as a day of anger, sadness and maybe even relief on Sunday when Michigan State athletic director Alan Haller suspended head coach Mel Tucker without pay due to allegations of sexual harassment.
By now, if you’re a member of this site, you are aware of the allegations levied against Tucker. There is no need to rehash them here.
Suspension without pay seems like a clear indicator that Michigan State has no intentions of bringing Tucker back as head coach, although no one would come out and say it that way on Sunday.
Haller and Michigan State President Teresa K. Woodruff emphasized that the investigation and case is still open-ended. The accuser and the accused will have their hearing in early October before an outside, third party Title IX attorney.
It’s possible that the attorney could rule Tucker’s way, that the phone sex conversation in question was consensual. But based on MSU’s suspension without pay, it seems that Michigan State isn’t betting that that will be the outcome.
If the Title IX attorney sides with Tucker, he may get all or most of the huge contract that is owed to him. But that doesn’t mean he will get his job back at Michigan State. It looks at this point like Saturday’s 45-14 victory over Central Michigan will be the last game he coaches at Michigan State.
ANGER?
Anger? Haller seemed angry during Sunday’s brief press conference. He’s a principled, measured professional. But he is not Tucker’s cornerman in all of this. He and Tucker have not had a harmonious working relationship over the past 12-plus months. Haller is bothered that these steps were necessary. He’s probably disgusted and embarrassed for the university.
Some are wondering why Haller and Michigan State didn’t suspend Tucker in December, when these allegations were filed. Why did Michigan State wait until Sunday, after the allegations were reported in explicit detail by USA Today, to suspend the fourth-year head coach?
That’s a fair question with an easy answer: Haller and Michigan State administrators weren’t aware of those details until the USA Today report was published. They were aware that allegations had been made. But once the initial complaint was filed, Haller and Michigan State administrators were required to step back and pass the case to Title IX officials and have a complete hands-off disposition while the investigation, by an outside Title IX attorney, took place. Haller and university officials were not allowed to know the details and didn’t expect to learn more about the case until the hearing in October. The USA Today news story changed all of that.
“As there have been new developments before the hearing, I have suspended Mel Tucker without pay as an additional interim measure,” Haller said on Sunday.
The “new developments” caused the suspension.
One could argue that Michigan State should have suspended Tucker based purely on the fact that he had been accused of wrongdoing, especially in the category of sexual harassment, considering the university’s recent problems.
There have been cases in recent years of Michigan State football players being suspended due to accusations and allegations of sexual assault. If it’s okay to suspend a player due to accusations, why not suspend a coach?
Fair question. But is it also fair and proper to suspend any and every student, employee or professional on campus any time they are accused of sexual harassment? We all remember the lessons of the Duke lacrosse scandal. It turned out they were innocent and their accuser was lying.
Current Michigan basketball coach Juwan Howard was falsely accused of sexual assault when he was an NBA player in 1998.
And former Michigan State wide receiver Keith Mumphery was falsely accused of sexual assault in 2017, resulting in his expulsion from graduate school and the termination of his NFL career. Mumphery sued Michigan State in 2019. Michigan State settled with Mumphrey, admitted it was wrong and gave Mumphrey an undisclosed amount of cash.
So yeah, if you want to open yourself up as a university to losing more lawsuits in the future or settling out of court by paying large sums of money and inflict unjust damages on innocent people, Michigan State, sure, go ahead and suspend people any time they are accused.
Michigan State isn’t doing that anymore. Nor is Michigan State turning a blind eye to accusations, as we learned was the case in the Nassar tragedy.
“It is not the MSU of old because we maintain the confidence of the complainant and the respondent, while respecting and valuing the complainant and respondent’s right to share their story,” said Michigan State President Teresa K. Woodruff.
In other words, both sides will be heard. Even the accused.
“Our investigations are designed to be comprehensive and fair,” she said.
Fair. That’s a noble concept. A lot of witch hunters out there want blood as soon as there are accusations. Especially, it seems, when athletics is involved.
Should the same innocent-until-proven-guilty mindset apply to accused football players? Maybe not. Maybe being a part of an intercollegiate athletic team is a privilege, like they used to tell us when we were in middle school, or when they threatened to take recess away from us when we were in elementary. Maybe that privilege should be viewed differently than a professional occupation at the university. Maybe the privilege of playing a sport can and should be taken away more easily than a coach or an administrator’s right to continue doing their job.
I haven’t arrived at a strong conclusion on that question, but I can see why Michigan State didn’t suspend Tucker when he was accused in December, or when the investigation was completed in June. Michigan State chose to wait until the hearings in October.
SADNESS?
Sadness? This might not be a popular opinion right now, but I feel sad for Mel Tucker. How can I feel bad for someone who allegedly sexually harassed a survivor of a gang rape? Well, I feel sad for all parties.
And I honestly don’t think Tucker would have done what he did if he didn’t feel it was consensual. Was he ignorant? Apparently so. Was he stupid? I’m sure he would be the first to admit stupidity.
I’m not defending what he did. I’m not saying he should remain the Michigan State football coach. But I feel bad for him. That’s my truth. Maybe that makes me a bad person, I don’t know.
I am biased. I have gotten to know him a little bit over the last four years, and I’ve enjoyed being around him, professionally. He’s been a person of smiles and positive energy. I liked most of what I knew.
Of course, we never know everything about people that we see at work two or three times a week for seven months of the year. But I consistently had a good feeling for the way he treated people when I was around him. That’s all I can go by. And for that, I feel sad that he apparently allowed vices and blindnesses to potentially ruin this stage of his professional career and damage his personal and family life.
And I think USA Today’s news story was unnecessarily explicit. USA Today could have delivered an accurate, sufficient news report without all of the graphic detail. The story should have at least come with a warning that the article contained content of a graphic manner which may be disturbing to some. But there has been a desensitization of vulgarity across most levels of society these days and I guess this was just another example.
What if the Title IX attorney rules in Tucker’s favor and determines that the phone sex episode was consensual? Then we have explicit details of a consensual matter in Tucker’s private life having been printed in a national news publication.
Immoral and disgusting? That’s not the point here. At what point is this an unjust infringement on his personal privacy? I understand that it’s nearly impossible for public figures in our law system to win a defamation suit. I’m not the most well-read person, but I can’t remember a time when details of a highly personal relationship matter such as this, in regards to a public or private figure, was aired and documented in such graphic detail in a leading news publication. Yes, relationship. They had a relationship, immoral or not. What was the extent of their relationship? That’s going to be up to the Title IX attorney.
When Tucker submitted answers to the Title IX attorney for that investigation, he never dreamed his words, or the words and recollections of his accuser, would end up in a national news story because, quite frankly, can any of us ever remember Title IX investigatory findings of this nature ever being published, pertaining to anyone, anywhere?
Usually, Title IX investigations don’t involve public figures. But this investigation did. And the accuser turned over all 1,200 pages of the completed investigation to USA Today. And we were able to read the juicy details. We love dirty laundry, don’t we? We’re such good people.
Did this story help bring attention to a bigger issue – the problem of sexual assault and harassment in our country, and help the cause championed by Brenda Tracy, Tucker’s accuser and alleged victim? Maybe so.
I just know I’ve never read anything quite like that in a leading national news publication, with unnecessary details. “I’m an ass man,” she remembers Tucker saying.
Did that phrase really help anyone’s cause?
The news story and its significance would have been complete without that phrase and many like it, thank you very much.
Relief?
What if the October hearing had come and gone without any of us knowing about it? What if the Title IX attorney ruled against Tucker in a hearing that the public didn’t know was taking place?
What if Michigan State was tasked with firing Tucker with cause during the Spartans’ bye week, without any of us having a clue that this case was being heard? What if Haller and Woodruff had to call a press conference one day in early October and tell us, without warning, that Tucker had been terminated?
Was it possible that all of that could have come down without it leaking out at some point? Probably not. But now Haller doesn’t have to worry about being the one to break the news. Now that he knows how strong the accuser’s case is, he probably doesn’t have to worry about moving forward with Tucker as the head coach. Haller and Michigan State have a chance to move on from this football coach, and the albatross of his contract.
It will come with damage. Michigan State’s 2023 season has been interrupted and knocked off stride. Recruiting is going to take a hit in 2024, maybe a severe one. But when the ’24 class is supposed to come into maturity around 2026, maybe that crazy transfer portal thing will be of use.
The current Michigan State roster has a load of good, strong talent, with size and speed. Some Spartan coaches will work to keep as much of that talent in place for whoever is coaching Michigan State next year. It’s been my experience, having covered a few coaching transitions over the years, that some assistant coaches will work harder than others to recruit and retain players. Those that want to prove themselves valuable to the next head coach and attempt to stay in East Lansing will work hard to protect the roster assets. Other coaches will not.
Some Spartan coaches are already working to retain the 13 current committed recruits for 2024. This is going to be a difficult task. Whoever is Michigan State’s head coach on December 1 will have a couple of weeks to cobble together a recruiting class. Staff members with a great evaluation sense for low-level, underrated three-star recruits, like the ones who made up Mark Dantonio’s first recruiting class in 2007, will be valuable.
Who were the main architects of that ’07 class? It was Dantonio and Harlon Barnett. Michigan State could use two good men like Barnett and Dantonio right now. And here they are, front and center, ready to get back to work.
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