Yes, I am on record as saying the Mel Tucker hire by Michigan State is not an especially impressive one. Yet, I have acknowledged as well that head coaching hires often defy the conventional wisdom or the majority reaction.
Ed Orgeron has been a home run. Tom Herman has fallen far short of expectations. Jim Harbaugh hasn’t been a total bust, but he has been curb-stomped by Ohio State, not merely outclassed. It seems like an impossibility that Harbaugh will win a division title at Michigan in the next two years. (Maybe in 2022, Ryan Day’s recruits might not hit the sweet spot, but Michigan isn’t beating OSU in Columbus this upcoming November if the Buckeyes are healthy at the most important positions.)
I and anyone else who evaluates coaching hires must allow for the possibility of being wrong. If I am wrong on Mel Tucker at Michigan State — if Tucker surpasses my expectations and becomes a worthy successor to Mark Dantonio — Tucker will author a surprising story of achievement and vindication.
If there is a coach in the Big Ten who offers at least some evidence — a tangible, living example — that this kind of hire can work, it is none other than the head coach of the Wisconsin Badgers. Yes, I am referring to Paul Chryst.
Ryan Day is a unique example among current Big Ten coaches, inheriting a completely loaded roster entrusted to him by Urban Meyer. That is a conspicuously rare coaching situation not easily comparable to anything else we see in the United States, let alone the Big Ten.
Among the other prominent — and generally successful (to varying degrees) — head coaches in the Big Ten, most of them showed they could win as head coaches elsewhere.
James Franklin at Vanderbilt before coming to Penn State.
Jim Harbaugh at Stanford (not to mention the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers).
P.J. Fleck at Western Michigan.
Jeff Brohm at Western Kentucky.
Kirk Ferentz doesn’t fit this dynamic at Iowa… and Paul Chryst doesn’t fit this dynamic at Wisconsin. Ferentz, though, hadn’t been a head coach in Division I (FBS) football when he took the Iowa job. Chryst had… and it didn’t work out for him.
Chryst was consistent at Pittsburgh… but not in an impressive way. Chryst’s Panthers went 6-6 in all three regular seasons. He coached two of those three bowl games, but not the third, having been hired to coach Wisconsin by Barry Alvarez. (Joe Rudolph coached that bowl for Pitt at the end of the 2014 season, interestingly enough.) Chryst’s record in three seasons at Pittsburgh: 19-19. It was hardly, on paper, the kind of resume which lent itself to an upward move on the coaching ladder.
Yet, Alvarez knew Chryst and trusted him. Chryst was familiar with the Wisconsin Way. It has worked out quite well. Alvarez looked past a head coach’s unimpressive resume as a head coach, and focused instead on the many years Chryst had spent in the salt mines of coaching in other roles and capacities. That accumulated experience sold Alvarez, and it turns out that Alvarez’s instincts were entirely correct.
That is fundamentally what Michigan State is banking on with Mel Tucker. He coached a defense at Georgia to the national title game, and it came within an eyelash of beating Nick Saban’s Alabama team for all the marbles. Tucker has worked on the coaching staffs of Nick Saban and Jim Tressel. He coached as an assistant for over 20 years before getting his chance to be a head coach at Colorado. Michigan State isn’t basing its decision on one year in Boulder in 2019, but on two decades of expertise.
Chryst had over two decades of (assistant) coaching experience when Alvarez picked him as the successor to Gary Andersen.
Wisconsin hopes Mel Tucker doesn’t work out at Michigan State… at least not when the Spartans play the Badgers. Yet, if Tucker does refute me and anyone else who is not impressed by this hire, he will follow in the footsteps of Paul Chryst and Wisconsin.
Did I ever tell you sports were endlessly fascinating?