Michigan State Spartans Football 2024 Post-Mortem Recap: The Worst Season

While Off Tackle Empire continues to search for a beat reporter for Michigan State, in the interim I am the staff writer closest to Sparty Nation, having made friends with Sparty Correspondent Emeritus Green Akers and lived in Metro Detroit.

And believe me, they experienced it during the most recent season.

They had the worst season of anyone in the Big Ten, in my opinion, without a doubt. Although they defeated Indiana head-to-head and won more games than them, MSU had it worse for a number of reasons.

First off, Michigan State hoped to see Mel Tucker restore a program two years after an 11-2 performance, while Indiana had very modest expectations as they were merely looking to see if Tom Allen had a miracle in him.

Second—and this is really important—two weeks into the season, Michigan State’s head coach was dismissed for engaging in non-consensual, one-way phone sex with a person whose sole job it was to teach collegiate athletes about all facets of affirmative consent.

There truly isn’t a horrible Michigan State season that can be compared to this one since none of them included the extra humiliation of having to fire your head coach for making approaches toward a sexual assault consultant.

The first game of the year was an uncomfortably tight victory over Central Michigan, 31–7, deep into the third quarter. Following a pointless FCS cupcake victory, the Tucker news broke. Although I doubt the Spartans’ record would have changed if Tucker hadn’t mishandled generational wealth by lying to the one person in the world most likely to find out, his dismissal did make the season seem pointless. The starting quarterback and standout receiver for MSU had been stolen.