Michigan State Football: Mel Tucker ranked No. 24 coach in the Power 5

Michigan State football coach Mel Tucker saw a massive leap in the CBS Sports head coach rankings ahead of the 2022 season.

It’s offseason rankings season and you know what that means: fans are ready to get irrationally angry over lists that mean next to nothing. But hey, we all love a good debate, don’t we?

Michigan State football fans have a renewed sense of excitement with the Mel Tucker era really ramping up and that has led to some raised eyebrows over questionable rankings lately.

Need an example? Payton Thorne was ranked the No. 25 quarterback in the country by 247Sports and seven incoming Spartan transfers were listed in the top 247 of 247Sports’ Transfer Portal Rankings. Both of those rankings seemed to play into the ‘#disrespekt’ card that Michigan State fans have rode to success.

Thorne is much better than 25th nationally and No. 4 in the Big Ten, right?

All eight incoming transfers deserved to be ranked in the top 247 and all of the ones listed seemed far too low with Daniel Barker being the highest at No. 83. That’s just too low, right?

Now, there’s a new poll that will cause Michigan State fans to wave the #disrespekt flag and it’s the Power Five head coach rankings ahead of the 2022 season. CBS Sports does this ranking every year and last season, Tucker was ranked No. 57 in the Power Five after going 2-5 in his opening season with the Spartans.

This season, CBS Sports has Tucker ranked No. 24 in the Power Five.

Obviously, I believe this is a little too low. While there are plenty of fair coaches ahead of him, I think I’d put him somewhere in that top-20 range after leading Michigan State to an 11-2 encore season and landing a top-25 class for 2022.

The poll has Tucker behind PJ Fleck, Pat Fitzgerald, James Franklin, Paul Chryst, Kirk Ferentz, Jim Harbaugh, and Ryan Day in the Big Ten. Is he really the eighth-best coach in the Big Ten? I find that hard to believe and the only thing that keeps him below guys like Fleck, Fitzgerald, Franklin, Chryst, and Ferentz is sample size.

I’m looking forward to the CBS Sports ranking next year when he’s in the top-15 range.