Content warning: This story contains graphic language of a sexual nature.
Until this weekend, there were questions about whether Michigan State could afford to fire Mel Tucker, who signed a $95-million contract in 2021. By Sunday, Michigan State could not afford to keep him. For the sake of the school, for the community, for anybody with a sense of recent history, Tucker has to go.
As USA Today detailed Saturday, highly respected survivors’ advocate Brenda Tracy accused Tucker of sexual harassment in a December 2022 Title IX complaint filed with the school. The accused offenses included masturbating during a phone conversation, asking her, If I wasn’t a football coach and if I wasn’t married, would you date me? and inviting her to his hotel room. Tucker said Tracy distorted “our mutually consensual and intimate relationship.”
