NFL
By: Zachary Draves
Famed crime author Patricia Cornwell once said “I believe the root of all evil is abuse of power”. That litany of such evil extends as far back as time goes and now they have their newest member of the club, Michigan State football coach Mel Tucker.
(Courtesy: Mike Mulholland/Getty Images)
Tucker has been accused of sexual misconduct by prominent activist and rape survivor Brenda Tracy, founder of the Set the Expectation campaign that educates college athletes, especially men, about preventing sexual violence. In an official Title IX compliant, Tracy alleges that Tucker made a series of unwanted sexual comments towards her while he was masturbating during a phone call that took place in April 2022, a year after she had been invited to speak to the football team and share her story of being a gang rape survivor in 1998.
(Courtesy: Liz Wilson)
She was later invited to talk to the team and staff on another occasion and was subsequently named an honorary co-captain during a spring football game.
Tucker has since denied the accusations, but claims that he and Tracy engaged in consensual “phone sex”.
According to USA Today, Tucker was suspended by Michigan State without pay this past Sunday as he awaits on an official hearing that is scheduled for Oct. 5 and 6. Only later does it become known, according to a series of emails by the Title IX hearing administrator, that he and his attorney Jennifer Belveal, halted the hearing that was originally scheduled prior to the start of the college football season on Aug. 22 and Aug. 23.
In the emails, the administrator proposed ten alternative dates for September, in which Tracy and her attorney Karen Truszkowski were available for all except one. Tucker and Belveal said that they were unavailable for nine before agreeing to early October.
How convenient is it that their availability coincides with the Spartans first bye week?
During this whole stretch, Tucker was raking in $750,000 a month according to his contract before his suspension, for a grand total of $6 million accumulated off the dignity and humanity of Brenda Tracy.
To call that sick and twisted doesn’t do it enough justice.
Tucker has clearly forgotten why he was hired to coach in the first place. Not simply for the intricacies of Xs and Os that it takes to win games and certainly not to garner superficial status, but to model an example for young men on what it means to have good character and to be active citizens.
Instead, how chose to obliterate that trust and in the process betrayed a rape survivor and his players by choosing to go down the deep dark abyss of toxic masculinity.
Toxic Masculinity refers to “the notion that some people’s idea of “manliness” perpetuates domination, homophobia, and aggression. Involves cultural pressures for men to behave in a certain way. And it’s likely this affects all boys and men in some fashion.”
The idea that men have to exude a poorly and dangerous constructed idea of what constitutes manhood. Men are supposed to be dominant, controlling, and unemotional except for anger, and view women and girls as inferiors or sexual objects.
Now certainly not all men and boys exhibit these kinds of behaviors or will grow up to be like Mel Tucker. That is exactly why Brenda Tracy has devoted her life to ensuring that men and boys realize that they are not the problem, but rather the solution to preventing sexual violence.
Since she came forward with her story in 2014, she has impacted many lives and has created change agents within the collegiate sporting world and beyond.
(Courtesy: Youtube)
That is what Tucker chose to exploit and whatever he has coming to him will be because of his own doing. Let this be a lesson to all male coaches, Set the Expectation.
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