Former Michigan State football QB Katin Houser details relationship with Mel Tucker

One of the most important things to a college football program outside of on-field performance is having great relationships between players and the coaching staff. Especially in today’s day and age of recruiting it’s essential for coaches to be close with their players to decrease the chances of them entering the transfer portal.

Michigan State football has always been a program that’s prided itself on having that elite culture between players and the coaching staff. That’s one of the reasons why the height of Mark Dantonio was so great.

But I think we all felt a drastic drop-off when Mel Tucker was hired, especially towards the end of his tenure.

Former Michigan State quarterback Katin Houser appeared on The Holton Ahlers Show and shared a prime example of how bad his relationship was with Tucker.

"I don’t think I’ve ever been to his office (since I committed)."

- Katin Houser

Houser later went on to say, “I never had that personal relationship with him.”

I honestly can’t believe that Tucker didn’t have a close relationship with one of his quarterbacks. Don’t get me wrong, I get that it’s got to be tough to have a close relationship with every player on a team considering how large college football teams are, but at the very least every college head coach should make somewhat of an effort to get to know each of their players.

But you’d think it’d be obvious for head coaches to definitely have a close relationship with their quarterbacks at the very least. But I guess that wasn’t so obvious to Tucker.

As time goes on it seems like more and more of these stories keep coming out that show Tucker was never the right guy for the job. It makes me sick that Michigan State ever gave that man the massive extension that it did.

Thankfully his tenure is in the past and Michigan State now has new life under Jonathan Smith. He seems to be the exact opposite person compared to Tucker, so hopefully that’s a good sign when it comes to both on-field success and keeping the locker room in good spirits.