Michigan State football in dangerous territory without Luke Fickell

Luke Fickell has turned down the Michigan State football job and the Spartan program is now in a dark place with no light at the end of the tunnel.

It was the worst-case scenario everyone had hoped to avoid. Bill Beekman and Co. came back from a meeting with Luke Fickell on Sunday and the optimism was high, but there were conflicting reports about what the Cincinnati head coach was going to do.

Would he entertain the idea of leaving a top Group of Five program for a struggling Power Five school that has shown the ability to make a playoff and win the Big Ten in the past decade?

All signs seemed to point to yes, especially with the insider info, but after talking with his family and sleeping on an offer, Fickell decided to stay at Cincinnati and pass up an offer that would have likely doubled his salary. It’s the worst-possible scenario for Michigan State.

Going into the coaching search last week, everyone assumed that Fickell was the top option, and he likely was. The athletic department tried to gauge Matt Campbell’s interest and it just wasn’t there. And then Pat Narduzzi said he was staying at Pitt and Robert Saleh didn’t want to entertain the job because he had unfinished business with the 49ers.

Mel Tucker, too, announced that he was taking his name out of the running, leaving Fickell as the prime candidate and the smoke seemed to be present.

Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire, but what Michigan State fans didn’t realize was that the fire was coming within their own athletic department.

Bill Beekman couldn’t convince a Midwest guy to leave a Group of Five program for the Power Five after more than doubling his current salary. Michigan State was no longer a program that coaches would “crawl to” — which Mark Dantonio claimed would happen.

Michigan State is now in dangerous territory and it’s likely that Mike Tressel will be the interim head coach in 2020 as the Spartans try to figure out the full-time guy after next season.

Recruiting will suffer in this state of limbo.

The 2020 schedule is brutal, so a bowl berth is not a given.

The program will be set back a couple of years for whoever the next coach is.

Will Tressel prove people wrong, make a bowl and get offered the full-time job? It’s possible but that would require him exceeding expectations in one year. That’s tough to do for any coach, let alone an interim guy.

The timing of Dantonio’s retirement may have been the thing holding Fickell back. Maybe he didn’t want to leave his program right after signing day, picking up one of the best classes in Cincinnati history. Really, it’s just a bad time for everyone involved.

That being said, Michigan State couldn’t avoid a disaster scenario in the coaching search and you better believe that it’s in dangerous territory with a likely year of an interim coach approaching.