Michigan State Football: 1 reason Mel Tucker’s right and 1 reason he’s wrong about NIL

Earlier this week, Mel Tucker made a comment that Michigan State football’s NIL donations are nowhere near where he wants them to be, which is probably the case at every school.

While the media is crucifying Mel Tucker for his comments per usual, Tucker brings up some valid points. It’s a tactic used by pretty much every coach in America. But saying “the fans and alumni need to help with NIL” has two sides to it.

Here’s the argument for both.

Why he’s right: MSU is a top-20 revenue program and it needs to act like it

Year after year, Michigan State ranks in the top 20 in money made each football season, as well as overall attendance. These fans do care about football and just because our basketball program is elite doesn’t mean football is the red-headed stepchild.

And 2015 proved this with Michigan State going to both the college football playoff and the Final Four and there was plenty of fanfare for both. Fans came out in droves for the Big Ten title game and the Final Four, albeit only being a four-hour drive for Spartan diehards.

Michigan State has a rich football history with six national titles, all coming after World War II. With over 500,000 alumni and how nuts this country is for football, Michigan State should be raking in NIL money with even just a few hundred thousand small donations from everyday people.

Yes, having Tom Gores, Dan Gilbert, and Mat Ishbia as alumni helps tremendously, but they’re not Tucker’s personal ATM machines. Tucker is simply telling alumni and donors, big and small, that other schools are getting help from their graduates, and if you want to see this football team reach places it hasn’t been to since 1966, we need to step up, too.