EAST LANSING – The same day Mel Tucker put his signature on a lucrative six-year contract to become Michigan State’s new head coach, he hopped on a plane.
Joined by his wife, JoEllyn, and two sons, they left Colorado on Wednesday, touched down at Capital Region International Airport in Lansing and made the short drive to campus.
Tucker, a former Michigan State graduate assistant from 1997-98 who spent last year as Colorado’s head coach, is back in East Lansing and said he doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon.
“I brought quite a few bags with me so I actually don’t plan on going back,” Tucker said. “JoJo and the boys at some point will be heading back but whatever I don’t have here now will be shipped here. I’m hunkering down.”
Mel Tucker plans on being ‘thorough’ in assembling Michigan State coaching staff
Tucker was named Michigan State’s 25th head coach on Wednesday and replaces Mark Dantonio, who announced his retirement on Feb. 4 after 13 seasons leading the program. The timing of a coaching change at this point of the year is a little unusual. And Tucker took the job just a few days after tweeting he was flattered by interest from Michigan State but committed to Colorado. It’s his third job in three years after serving as the defensive coordinator at Georgia from 2016-18 before making his debut as a head coach at Colorado.
“Every situation is different and I expect them to be unique,” Tucker said. “This is the right time and that’s the way I look at it. I believe in neutral thinking and you try not to judge it and take it for what it is and move forward best we can and I’m excited to do that.”
After arriving on campus, Tucker was in the room when the university’s Board of Trustees approved his hiring. He also had his first team meeting, which junior linebacker Antjuan Simmons described as “intense,” and climbed on stage for his introductory press conference.
“We want to hit the ground running,” Tucker said. “Time is of the essence. We’re not going to waste any time. We are going to be efficient, we’re going to be effective in everything that we do. We are going to recruit, we’re going to identify the players that we feel like can help us and then we’re going to target them, we’re going to recruit them with the intent of signing those guys.”
One of the first matters to address is Tucker finalizing a coaching staff. His contract stipulates a $6 million pool for his 10 on-field assistants and that’s an increase of more than $1 million from Dantonio’s staff last year. It’s unclear if Tucker is considering retaining any of the remaining members of the staff and two have reportedly already secured new jobs.
It’s also mid-February, which means Michigan State players are now going through offseason workouts and Tucker anticipates spring practice to start the second week of March. That gives him about a month to get a staff in place and evaluate the roster for a team that finished 7-6 each of the last two seasons and lost the bulk of its key contributors.
“I have some work to do in terms of learning our roster and that’s part of what you do in an out-of-season scheme evaluation, player evaluation,” Tucker said. “Just find out what we need to do to get better.”
Mel Tucker returns to Michigan State to fulfill a dream
There was a one-week gap between when Dantonio announced his retirement and when Tucker was hired. In the meantime, defensive coordinator Mike Tressel served as interim head coach and the offseason workouts continued amid uncertainty about who would lead the program moving forward.
“We’re not going to allow guys to fall off,” Simmons said. “You either want to be here or you don’t. I’m not trying to make some like big public statement or anything but that’s just what it is. You either want to be here or you don’t. It’s not going to be any in between.”
From hiring a staff to evaluating the roster to recruiting to getting prepared for spring practice ahead of his first season as Michigan State’s head coach, Tucker has a long list to check off. But, he declared himself “fresh and ready” on the evening of one of the busiest days of his life.
“Everything that has to be done in a football program, quite frankly, has already started for me,” Tucker said. “We sleep fast, we’ll be sleeping fast and getting after it. We’re going to make the most of every opportunity that we have.”
Related Michigan State football stories:
Michigan State makes Mel Tucker one of nation’s highest-paid coaches
Michigan State pays $100,000 for search firm in hiring Mel Tucker
Ken Mannie retires after 25 years as Michigan State’s head strength and conditioning coach
Inside the eight-day coaching search that brought Mel Tucker to Michigan State
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