Once More Into The Breach...

Unless you are an alum/fan of the University of Colorado Buffaloes football team, then this declaration and everything that came after it this week probably went unnoticed:

In spite of Coach Tucker's Twitter declaration one week ago Saturday, less than seventy-two hours later, CU announced that he had resigned the position as our head football coach and Michigan State announced that he had accepted the position as their head football coach.  Given that Coach Tucker made no less than three public declarations on Monday, February 10 of his love for CU and his intention to remain in Boulder, which declarations were made in radio interviews and at a southern California dinner with CU donors/boosters, I nevertheless woke up at 3:00 am eastern time on Tuesday, February 11 to news, first reported by Bruce Feldman of The Athletic, confirming that Coach Tucker was placing Boulder squarely in his rear-view mirror.  

By day's end, it was all over but the shouting - most of it being done (appropriately) by the young men who either played for Coach Tucker this past season or who had been recruited by him and by his staff to play for the Coach Tucker's Buffs in 2020, having bought into his promises regarding his commitment to CU and to them, only to be reminded that actions matter and words are simply noise. 

Mel Tucker is an Ohioan, born and raised.  Michigan State University, where he apparently began his coaching career, backed up the Brinks truck for him.  His annual salary at MSU shall be more than twice what it was at CU.  In spite of only having a single year's experience as a head coach - the 2019 season at CU - in which he coached the Buffs to a 5-7 record, MSU signed him to a contract that shall make him one of the fifteen highest-paid coaches in college football.  They made him an offer he simply could not refuse.

Once upon a lifetime ago, WPK, Sr. taught me that a man's word was his bond.  He taught me that you under-promise and over-deliver.  Whether Mel Tucker was raised with those same lessons I know not.  I know only that over the course of the past week-plus, he breached them. 

-AK