Mel Tucker, who played football for Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin in the early 1990s, did not become head coach of the Badgers. He has, however, become a Big Ten head coach, moving from Colorado to take the open job at Michigan State after Mark Dantonio retired earlier this month.
Barry Alvarez has had to fill multiple football coaching vacancies in his tenure as Wisconsin’s athletic director. He had to replace Gary Andersen when the former Utah State coach abruptly bolted from Madison and went to take the Oregon State job a few years ago. Alvarez tabbed Paul Chryst to replace Andersen, a move which has worked out really well.
A few years earlier, though, Bret Bielema left Wisconsin to coach Arkansas in the SEC. Bielema couldn’t resist the lure of coaching in the Southeastern Conference, apparently unsatisfied by the challenge of coaching in the Big Ten in a league with Urban Meyer of Ohio State and the aforementioned Dantonio at Michigan State. When Bielema left, guess whom Alvarez interviewed (among others) for the open UW job?
Yup. Mel Tucker.
It is fascinating to wonder if Alvarez had looked around in December of 2012 and felt that Tucker, not Andersen, was the right man for the job. Consider the ripple effect this might have had on college football history over the next seven years.
Tucker doesn’t join Kirby Smart as defensive coordinator at Georgia, for one thing. Tucker probably wouldn’t have joined Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama before he moved to Georgia.
If Tucker had taken the Wisconsin job, first off, the bizarre actions of Gary Andersen never would have unfolded. The 59-0 loss to Ohio State in the 2014 Big Ten Championship Game — a clear product of Andersen having mentally checked out of the UW job because he had one foot already out the door — never would have happened. Maybe Ohio State doesn’t make the College Football Playoff under adjusted circumstances… and therefore would not have won the 2014 national championship.
Tucker didn’t coach Wisconsin in the 2013 and 2014 seasons. Gary Andersen did. Now we will have to see how Tucker’s arrival at Michigan State changes the course of Big Ten football history.
You could look it up… in five years.