MSU Coach Mel Tucker Fired After Sexually Explicit Phone Call

EAST LANSING, MI — Michigan State University terminated football coach Mel Tucker on Wednesday, citing moral turpitude after Tucker masturbated and made explicit comments while on the phone with an activist hired to educate the team about sexual misconduct.

Tucker brought contempt and ridicule to the university, officials said Wednesday, a breach of his 10-year, $95 million contract.

In a letter to Tucker dated Sept. 18, Director of Athletics Alan Haller notified the coach of the university’s intent to terminate him after the school hired activist and rape survivor Brenda Tracy in 2021 to help reduce sexual misconduct. In 2022, she alleged a Title IX violation, the letter said.

Tucker admitted to commenting on Tracy’s body, making flirtatious comments and what he described as phone sex, according to the letter, which gave him a week to respond.

“Simply put, Mr. Tucker’s response does not provide any information that refutes or undermines the multiple grounds for termination for cause set forth in the notice,” Haller said Wednesday in a prepared statement. “Instead, his 25-page response, which includes a 12-page letter from his attorney and a 13-page ‘expert report,’ provides a litany of excuses for his inappropriate behavior while expressly admitting to the problematic conduct outlined in the notice.”

Tucker’s lawyer, Jennifer Belveal, said the university has known since an investigation in March that her client admitted to the sexually explicit phone call.

Tracy's allegations were made public by USA Today earlier this month, and on the same day that the report was published, Tucker was suspended.

"The notice, which is entirely premised on information you knew at least seven months ago, if not earlier, now affirms Tucker's belief that the investigation was never interested in the truth," she wrote.

She denied in a statement that Tucker's actions constituted moral turpitude — "by any stretch of the imagination" — at the university that operates in the shadow of Larry Nassar's sexual abuse of more than 100 athletes.

Tucker has said the phone sex was consensual and that the allegations against him are "completely false."

"I can only conclude that there is an ulterior motive designed to terminate my contract based on some other factor such as a desire to avoid any (Nassar) taint, or my race or gender," Tucker, who is Black, said in a response his attorney shared earlier this month.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.