Strength coach for Spartans is leaving
Mannie retires; DT coach Burton to join Indiana
Chris Solari
EAST LANSING – The changes within Michigan State’s football program continue to come rapidly.
Ken Mannie, the Spartans’ venerable head strength and conditioning coach, announced he will be retiring via Twitter on Thursday morning. He joined Nick Saban’s staff in December 1994 and spent the past 25 years at MSU, working for every football coach since.
Mannie made $263,575 in salary for 2019. He said retiring was a decision he made a year
ago in consultation with his wife, Marianne.
“For the past several years, it has been ‘let’s go one more,’ as coaching, teaching, and mentoring have been my life’s passions,” Mannie wrote. “All of the mentors I truly respect and admire are coaches and teachers, and they inspired me to pursue this path – one that has blessed us with so many cherished moments and memories.”
Mannie spent 45 years coaching at various levels of high school and college football. The former Akron football player was named the 2015 national strength and conditioning coach of the year by FootballScoop.com. He was inducted into the USA Strength/Conditioning Coaches Hall of Fame’s collegiate division in 2014 and was appointed to the board of directors of the USA Strength and Conditioning Hall of Fame in 2018, among numerous other national organizations he has served.
Mel Tucker, whom MSU hired as its new head football coach on Wednesday, was a graduate assistant coach at MSU in 1997-98. Mannie tweeted his blessing for the hire hours before announcing his retirement.
“As a young GA with us during Nick’s tenure, Mel worked with me in the (weight room) in the mornings, and with football in the afternoons because he loved being around the kids as much as possible,” Mannie wrote. “Great hire for kids/MSU!”
Mannie’s retirement comes a little more than a week after Mark Dantonio, the school’s winningest coach, announced he would step down after 13 seasons.
A second Dantonio assistant, defensive tackles coach Ron Burton, also appears to have found a new job. Burton reportedly will stay in the Big Ten and join Tom Allen’s staff at Indiana, according to Zach Osterman of the Indianapolis Star.
Burton arrived in 2013 and built MSU’s defensive line into one of the nation’s top runstopping units that helped produce two Big Ten titles and a College Football Playoff appearance with the likes of Joel Heath, Malik McDowell, Raequan Williams and Mike Panasiuk in the middle of it.
Terrence Samuel left MSU last week to become the wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator at UNLV. He had been shifted to an assistant defensive backfield coaching role with the Spartans prior to the 2019 season, part of Dantonio’s assistant coaching shuffle of roles and responsibilities.
It is unclear what Tucker plans to do with the remainder of MSU’s assistant coaches – defensive coordinator Mike Tressel, who was acting head coach after Dantonio’s retirement; offensive coordinator Brad Salem; quarterbacks coach Dave Warner; offensive line coach Jim Bollman; tight ends coach Mark Staten; wide receivers coach Don Treadwell; defensive ends coach Chuck Bullough; and defensive backs coach Paul Haynes.
That group has been left in limbo with Dantonio’s sudden retirement at a time when most of the jobs around the country already have been filled. Their contracts all stipulate they will no longer be employed by MSU on March 31 after Dantonio’s retirement, though Tucker could decide to retain one or more for his staff.
“We have to put together a staff,” Tucker said Wednesday night. “I told the players I can't guarantee that I'm going to bring in every guru or some football genius, you know, X & O guy. We want to bring in, first and foremost, coaches with tremendous character that are great role models for our players, family guys that care about young men, that are going to treat our young men as their own children, their own family.
“That's a big part of what we'll be doing in the next few days and I can assure you, there's no shortage of great coaches out there who want to be here with me and these young men. Then we're getting ready for spring ball. So there's a strength and conditioning aspect of it, and a program of running and lifting and preparing ourselves so we can compete in spring ball.”
Tucker has previously worked with Tressel, Bollman and Haynes at Ohio State when he was there as defensive backs coach from 2001-03 and co-defensive coordinator in 2004 before going on to become an NFL position coach and coordinator.
Staff changes within an MSU program that prided itself on staff continuity under Dantonio began back in September when of his top behind-the-scenes assistants, Brad Lunsford, departed his post as director of executive football operations. Lunsford, an MSU alum who joined Dantonio’s staff in 2007, left the program to become owner and operator of a chain of Chick-fil-A restaurants in metro Detroit.
Contact Chris Solari at csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Read more on the Michigan State Spartans and sign up for our Spartans newsletter.