Mel Tucker blew his MSU career. Did he ruin those of future Black coaches, too? | Opinion

When USA TODAY broke the news about Michigan State University football coach Mel Tucker early Sunday morning, I cringed.

Brenda Tracy, a rape survivor and advocate for sexual assault survivors, filed a complaint with the university last December. Tracy, who had been hired by MSU to educate Tucker's players about consent, alleges that Tucker inappropriately touched himself during a phone call last fall. Tucker told investigators that the act was consensual. Tucker was suspended hours after the story broke. A hearing is scheduled for October.

It upset me not just as an avid football fan, but as an African American man. As I began to dissect this situation, I worried that Mel Tucker will be hailed as the latest explanation for why Black coaches will continue to be passed over in major college football, especially at Power 5 Schools where big time money and NIL (name, image and likeness) deals freely flow.

Unfortunately, that’s the burden Tucker carries as a Black football head coach — like it or not. But Tucker should have understood the microscope he is under, and that should have guided his moral compass.

Tucker, a married man, should have known better than to interact with any woman inappropriately, especially someone who has gone through the trauma of rape.

What Mel Tucker has jeopardized

I’m not trying to decipher whose version is accurate, although I’m sympathetic to any rape victim who's alleging sexual harassment. Ultimately, that is what the hearing next month will determine.

Yet I am deeply troubled that Tucker admitted to investigators that he had fondled himself on the phone with Tracy.

MSU should have known: Mel Tucker news was always going to leak

It does not matter whether Tucker's marriage was on the rocks. He's preached about character, but what I'm looking at when I gauge character is what a person does behind closed doors, when nobody’s watching.

As a leader — helping teenagers become men — and as the highest-paid Black coach in America, what Tucker admits to doing should never have crossed his mind.

See, as of this season, Tucker is one of 14 Black head coaches in the Football Bowl Division, which comprises 133 schools. That’s about 10.5% of all coaches.

There are only eight Black head coaches in the Power Five conferences this season. Two major conferences — the SEC and the Big 12 — have no Black coaches.

Mind you, Black football players make up more than half of the sport.

That’s what’s at stake in Tucker's fate at MSU.

I am not sure how, as a coach in a locker room full of African American young men, Tucker can in good conscience hold them accountable for their misdeeds.

It's particularly ironic, said Louis Moore, a 15-year history professor at Grand Valley State University who has held discussions on sports and the civil rights movement, that Tucker met Tracy because she was educating his team about the culture of sexual violence in sports.

"That’s why having this woman there was so important, because he was dealing with these issues,” Moore said. “He has a predominantly African-American team, and here they are talking about consent on campus, where at any point something can go wrong. That’s why this is so appalling — because he was doing the work.”

When Tucker was hired at MSU in 2020, it came after a 5-7 season, with a fractured locker room and off-field problems under then-coach Mark Dantonio (now the associate head coach during Tucker's suspension). Tucker was tasked, under scrutiny, to clean up the program.

Among most egregious issues was the case of Auston Robertson, who was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison after he admitted raping a woman at her off-campus apartment in 2018.

So now, instead of the players getting in trouble, it’s the coach.

Hanging in the background is Larry Nassar, who was accused of sexually assaulting hundreds of young gymnasts over decades. He's serving up to 175 years in prison. It has the athletic program on high alert, as it should.

That’s why I’m pissed — like many Black folks —  that Tucker appears to be fumbling his $95-million bag. That’s why my social media timelines are buzzing about Tucker.

“He let a lot of people down, in that sense that he was so visible, and he made such a major mistake,” Moore said. “... He needs to, at a certain point, just own up to what he did, whether he thinks it's consensual or not.”

I'm galled by the notion that a Black coach will mess up an opportunity in the college ranks. It’s reminiscent of then-MSU head coach Bobby Williams answering “I don’t know” when asked whether he had lost control of his team. It came during heightened scrutiny of player suspensions and arrests, including one right after the press conference.

Williams was the last Black coach hired at MSU before Tucker, 21 years ago.

MSU alumni, fans react: Michigan State alumni, fans irate over Mel Tucker scandal. Why was this secret for months?

Expecting more

I’m gonna take a page out of Detroit Martin Luther King basketball coach George Ward’s playbook, and echo that we need to begin to hold our Black men accountable, and expect our coaches to act like the strong men they are.

In Detroit alone, a large swath of households are run by single women. That means Black men, as coaches at every level in sports, may be the only role male models our young people will see.

We must take this into account for those who are in the profession: our future is at stake, not only for those who make millions in the pros, but to those who earn degrees or simply become productive men in society.

Tucker was the example of how to make it at the highest level of college football.

And he may have blown it.

The question now becomes, how many opportunities has Tucker thwarted for those in his industry?

Moore thinks I'm too optimistic. He firmly believes that colleges have already made up their minds on Black coaches.

“These universities understand that the head football coach is the face of the university, and that's why there's so few of them,” Moore says. "They've always been reluctant to hire that (Black) face to be the front man of the university. So there's not going to be that much change.”

Coaches say timely mistakes always hurt their team. Tucker ought to know that.

Darren A. Nichols is a contributing columnist at the Free Press. He can be reached at darren@dnick-media.com or his Twitter handle @dnick12. Contact the Free Press opinion page: letters@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mel Tucker failed more than his MSU team. He failed all Black coaches