Mel Tucker is overpaid. The man himself has to admit that. Before completing his third season as a head coach — his second at Michigan State — Tucker is now the game’s second-highest paid coach.
Nick Saban is No. 1, and there are those who will suggest the only similarities between the two are their contracts and the fact that Tucker once worked for the great Alabama coach. Now, they can buy their own Mercedes dealerships. Wait, Saban already co-owns six of them, the same number of championships he has won at Alabama.
That’s one indicator Tucker has some catching up to do, you know, on the field where these big contracts are supposedly earned. In case you haven’t noticed in the coaching profession, salary frequently outstrips accomplishment.
The reaction to Tucker’s contract in the college athletics’ community is somewhere between floored and stunned. Tucker will collect $95 million from Michigan State over the next 10 years.
Good for him, but at least Bobby Bowden had won a national championship when he became the first $1 million dollar coach in 1995. So had Steve Spurrier when he became the first $2 million coach a year later.
Tucker is 16-14 as a head coach in his career. Just 21 months ago, he was leaving Colorado after one season in which he went 5-7. His biggest accomplishment in Spartyland is being the first Michigan State coach to go 2-0 against Michigan right out of the box while having his program competing for a Big Ten title and College Football Playoff berth into November.
He signed his extension Wednesday on the back of losing two of his last three games, at Purdue by 11 (MSU entered as a favorite) and at Ohio State by … 49.
For a while, Tucker’s running back, Kenneth Walker III, was the Heisman Trophy…
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