Michigan State Football: Almost everything about the Penn State game is wrong

Sometimes decisions of late by the Michigan State football program make less and less sense with the Penn State game being moved as the latest example.

After an amazing 11-2 season in 2021 that included wins over Miami (FL), Michigan, Penn State, and Pitt in the Peach Bowl, Spartans fans expected a lot moving forward. Going into the summer of 2022, Michigan State football went all in on highly recruited high schoolers by pulling out all the stops for official and unofficial visits for highly rated five and four-star recruits.

Unfortunately, that tactic seemed to not live up to the very high overall expectations of the Spartan’s recruiting efforts that off-season. Even though they had the No. 23 overall recruiting class according to 247 Sports and six four-star rated recruits, they finished fourth in the Big Ten in the recruiting rankings and failed to sign any of the five-star student-athletes they had come to East Lansing that summer.

It would eventually lead to the not renewing of the contracts for Saeed Khalif, General Manager/Executive Director of Player Personnel and Recruiting, Jensen Gebhardt, who served as the Recruiting Operations Coordinator, and Thomas Wilcher, who served as director of community and high school relations.

Then after a season where the Spartans missed going to a bowl game after going 5-7 with a very disappointing home loss to Indiana at home, Tucker kept all of his coordinators in defensive coordinator Scottie Hazelton, offensive coordinator Jay Johnson, and special teams coordinator Ross Els. No one is advocating that someone lose their job but many Spartans fans don’t understand why almost the entire recruiting staff was not retained after not living up to Tuckers’ expectations for recruiting but he did not make any major coaching changes after a season where the team had a losing record. It gives the fanbase mixed messages as to the direction of the program in terms of making changes to Tucker’s staff that benefit the program moving forward.

The decision to not have a traditional Spring game was a puzzling decision and a missed opportunity. April 15 was a beautiful day weather-wise in East Lansing and it was believed that had the Spartans had a traditional Spring game as opposed to what they had which resembled more of a typical spring practice, the attendance for the game would have been much larger and would have had a louder atmosphere and more vocal output of support that day from the fans. Many fans were frustrated at the choice to not have a traditional spring game and not much of a good reason was given as to why a spring game/scrimmage was not played.

Lastly, former Michigan State basketball player and alum and founder of United Wholesale Mortgage Mat Ishbia are ending their Name Image and Likeness (NIL) deal with Michigan State football, men’s basketball, and volleyball players at the end of this month. United Wholesale Mortgage gave the reason for the end of this agreement based on Ishbia’s purchase of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.

The most interesting part is that Michigan State spokesperson Matt Larson stated that Michigan State did not ask UWM or Ishbia to end the NIL deals with the Michigan State student-athletes. The NIL deal program gave members of the Michigan State football team for example up to $700 each month as long as the student-athletes posted social media posts to their social media accounts about United Wholesale Mortgage. The NIL deal will officially end at the end of the month.

Could Ishbia still donate money and help the NIL programs for Michigan State athletics? The answer is more than likely yes. Are other individuals in a similar situation doing the same thing? To be determined and we will see in the upcoming months if others like Ishbia will end NIL deals with the universities that they support due to having a conflict of interest based on the professional organization they are associated with.

Back to the Penn State game, there were other reasons not mentioned as to why changing the date, time, and location of the game was not beneficial to many. One is the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA), which traditionally hosts the Michigan high school football playoffs starting on the Friday after Thanksgiving and now for the first time in years, some high school football games will be played that weekend on Sunday. Another is the local businesses and employees of those businesses that benefit from home Spartan football games being played at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing and the surrounding areas. Those businesses will lose out on paying customers that weekend who would have attended that game against Penn State. However, the list of reasons goes on and on as mentioned throughout this article.

There are other smaller reasons why almost everything about this game with Penn State is not a good idea for not just the fans but for the Michigan State football program. However, no matter what Michigan State fans argue and or try to convince others why the moves and decisions made by the Spartans athletic department for this game make sense, there is no convincing of many Spartan fans as to why this was a good decision, plain and simple.