A father’s lessons
New CU coach Mel Tucker says Mel Sr. raised him as a “football man”
BOULDER» BROTHERS Joseph and Christian Tucker gazed out the window at snow-covered Folsom Field. On the video board atop the south stands was a bigger-than-life image of their dad, Mel Tucker, who had just been introduced as the 26th full-time head coach at the University of Colorado.
As the brothers talked about their father, they couldn’t help but talk about their grandfather.
“They are both just crazy people in that they are so passionate in what they do,” said 16-year-old Joseph. “They just go for it. My dad, if he sees something and he wants to do it, like flying drones or driving a boat or skiing, he’ll go all in.”
Christian, 14, quickly piped in: “My grandfather is the exact same way.”
Which explains why, during his introductory news conference at CU on Thursday, Tucker spoke fre- quently and lovingly about his dad and his childhood in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
“My father, Mel Sr., raised me as football man,” Tucker said. “My dad was my first coach. I’m proud of that. I think that being a coach is a very honorable profession, and coaching has been in my blood for quite some time.”
As Tucker, 46, laid out his vision for the Buffaloes’ program, he spoke in measured tones, but with a fierce intensity noticeable just beneath the surface.
“Why not us? Why not the Buffs?” said Tucker, who’s been the defensive coordinator at Georgia the past three seasons. “There is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to compete at a championship level and win championships. It’s been done here before. The time is now, in my mind.”
“The time is now,” could well be the Tucker family motto, whether it comes to football or romance.
Consider this: Tucker proposed to his wife, the former Joellyn Haynesworth, on their very first “official” date. They have been married for 19 years.
Jojo, as everyone calls her, was a Rutgers law school graduate and was set up on a blind date with Tucker by her roommate, who had been a classmate of Tucker’s at the University of Wisconsin.
“We’d been talking on the phone for a few weeks, but that date was the first time we met in person,” Jojo recalled. “I was in Cleveland for a job fair and we thought it was a good time to meet. We met a restaurant in the Flats area of Cleveland, and that was it.”
In love, as in football, the son took a cue from his father, who’s been married to Brenda for 50 years.
Closing the deal
Mel Sr., who’s enshrined in the University of Toledo Sports Hall of Fame as a football and baseball player, wasted no time closing the deal with the love of his life.
“I was at a party in my last year in Toledo when I met Brenda,” Mel Sr. said. “We danced all night and I wouldn’t let anybody else dance with her. Nobody. That was it. She was the one. And we’ve been together over 50 years.”
Mel Sr., who was born in born in Toledo and then moved to Cleveland at age 10, was a gifted athlete. He was a two-time all-mid-american Conference selection in football as a defensive end for Toledo in 1967-68, and a first-team allmac pick in baseball in 1967. That was the year he hit back-toback grand slams in a 19-3 victory over Detroit.
“They were both on curveballs, and that’s not easy to do. I was very proud of that,” he recalled with a laugh.
The father’s football influence on his son began early. They watched pro and college games together on TV with dad pointing out the nuances of the game.
“I remember telling him, ‘You see how that guy was running with the ball and that guy just kind of lunged at him to try to tackle him?’ ” Mel Sr. said. “I told my son, ‘Wait another yard or two where you could get up close to him, corner him, and then make some solid contact. Make something happen.’ He picked that up right away.”
Now Tucker is bringing that hard-knocks lesson to Boulder.
“Our team will be physical,” he said. “My dad always told me that the name of the game of football is hit. H-I-T. That’s the name of the game. There is always a place on the football field for someone who can hit. He’s told me that since I was 3 years old.”
Tucker, who was a wishbone quarterback at Cleveland Heights High School, came close to coming to the Air Force Academy to replace the late Dee Dowis. Instead, Tucker became a member of coach Barry Alvarez’s first recruiting class at Wisconsin. Tucker chose Wisconsin over Air Force because he had always wanted to play in the Big Ten.
During his four seasons as a defensive back and special-teams player at Wisconsin, Tucker earned a reputation as an intense, physical player who had a knack for being at the right spot at the right time. Indeed, one local writer described Tucker as a “demolition expert.”
“Mel was always very serious. A deep thinker,” recalled Alvarez, now the athletic director at Wisconsin. “You could tell he was a football guy. You could tell that he understood football, and that came from his dad. He was always intense and he was just the type of person I was looking for to build our program in my first year.”
Making an impression
One moment, in particular, stands out in Alvarez’s memory. After going 1-10 in 1990, the Badgers started gaining respectability in 1991. A turning point came with a 19-16 win at Minnesota on Nov. 16 that ended the Badgers’ 19game Big Ten losing streak, as well as a 23-game road losing streak.
“If Mel doesn’t make the big hit on the final play of that game, we don’t win it,” Alvarez recalled. “He blew that kid up.”
Tucker, a sophomore, entered the game late in the third quarter, replacing injured free safety Scott Nelson. With 10 seconds left in the game, Gophers tight end Patt Evans was about to make a catch in the end zone for a Minnesota victory — until Tucker let loose.
“I saw Evans coming from the left,” Tucker told the Wisconsin State Journal after the game. “I saw the ball was thrown, and I took a beeline for him. I tried to run through his chin strap.”
The Badgers finished the 1991 season 5-6 and posted the same record the following season. In 1993, they went 10-1-1 and beat UCLA 21-16 in the Rose Bowl.
In preseason practice during his junior season, Tucker broke his leg and couldn’t play. He ended up on the sideline on game days, standing next to Alvarez and acting as a quasi-assistant coach.
“You could tell that Mel was a student of the game,” Alvarez said. “It wasn’t just, ‘What am I supposed to do on this defensive call?’ He always knew a little bit more about it. It was always very serious business for him.”
Serious enough that he’s been working as an assistant coach since 1997, when he was a graduate assistant at Michigan State under Nick Saban, who’s won six national championships. Over the past 21 years, Tucker worked for Saban three times at three different schools (Michigan State, LSU and Alabama). From 2005-14, Tucker was an assistant on NFL staffs in Cleveland, Jacksonville and Chicago.
Now he gets the chance to run his own show. He’ll do it with lessons learned from his father.
“We’re going live tough. We’re going to eat tough. We’re going to practice tough,” Tucker said. “It’s going to be who we are and part of our culture. In order to play this game, you’ve got to be tough and physical.
“When they do wrong, we’ll point that out. When they do right, we’re going to go nuts. They’ll know they did it right.”