Melvin “Mel” Gene Tucker, the 53-year-old former football coach at Michigan State University, now finds himself at the centre of legal procedures.
However, he has been continuously absent from public view since the college suspended and fired him, which has become a significant issue in legal proceedings against him.
Where It All Began
Tracy was working as a consultant with the MSU and shared her story with the football team in August.
After a couple of months, Tucker and Tracy beagan speaking frequently on the phone; however, the coach allegedly made personal comments about her. Even asking if she would date him.
Tracy had also warned Tucker to keep their relationship strictly professional. Unfortunately, for Tucker’s case, he had other plans, and he even invited her to meet privately, right after Tracy was named honorary captain at MSU’s spring football game on April 16, 2022.
On April 28, 2022, they were on a late-night call, Tracy alleges, the coach “Mas******ed” without her consent, while Tucker believes it was a consensual “phone sex.”
“I heard my voice screaming inside my head, ‘You have to say something, you have to say something. You can’t let this happen again.” This was her reaction to the incident.
After a couple of months of the incident, Tracy calls a lawyer and begins the documentation process. At the end of the year, she filed a “Title IX sexual harassment complaint with MSU.”
Multiple Court Cases
The College also hired an independent Title IX investigator to verify the complaint in January 2023. Although it had been over six months, the independent investigator recommended a formal hearing.
“Coach Tucker has been delaying and trying to stop the investigative process since the beginning,” said the victim.
In September, when the allegations became public, MSU initially suspended and later terminated Tucker’s contract, which was valued at $95 million until 2032. He was one of the highest-paid college football coaches in history at that time.
Almost two years after Tracy’s first complaint, she filed a defamation lawsuit against Tucker, accusing him of lying about the nature of their relationship in October 2024.
Despite multiple attempts to locate the former player and coach, he has remained unreachable, forcing the court to provide alternative service methods to assist the Victim on March 17, 2025.
If he continues to ignore the case, Tracy could win by default. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for June 4, 2026, followed by a jury trial on June 29 at the Ingham County Veterans Memorial Courthouse, where Judge Wanda M. Stokes will preside.
However, this wasn’t the end of the complaints. On June 3, 2025, Tracy even filed a separate federal lawsuit against the MSU Board of Trustees, Rema Vaassar, and Dennis Denno, for mishandling her complaint and leaking her identity, saying, “I want the people who harmed me to be held accountable, and that’s more than just Mel Tucker.” The University is still working to dismiss the case.
