A former University of Wisconsin football staffer received a six-year show-cause penalty and the Michigan State football team vacated 14 games over the past three seasons afteran NCAA investigation, with findings released Nov. 12.
One of the vacated wins includes a 2022 victory over Wisconsin, though the Badgers record will remain officially unchanged.
The penalties levied against MSU included three years probation for violations during Mel Tucker’s tenure as head coach, as well as financial penalties. The NCAA’s Committee of Infractions found that MSU “arranged for and provided impermissible recruiting inducements and benefits and unofficial visit expenses” and used ineligible players.
All of MSU’s wins over the past three seasons will be vacated. MSU went 5-7 in 2024, 4-8 in 2023 and 5-7 in 2022. MSU didn’t face Wisconsin in either of the past two seasons but did stage a 34-28 win over the Badgers in 2022, two weeks after Wisconsin fired head coach Paul Chryst.
According to the Detroit Free Press: “The NCAA says Tucker ‘followed an NFL model for his program,’ running all off-field operations through his general manager, but ‘failed to adequately monitor his program.’ For that, Tucker has been given a three-year show-cause order, in which he will be suspended from 30% of the football season during the first season of his new employment.”
That general manager in question, Saeed Khalif, had been with Wisconsin from 2017 through 2020 as director of player personnel before Tucker hired him away to MSU. Khalif, along with Brandon Jordan and other members of the football staff, are identified as providing more than $10,000 of impermissible recruiting benefits to six prospects.
Khalif, who came to UW from Georgia Tech, helped produce some of the highest-rated recruiting classes in UW history.
Khalif received a six-year show-case penalty that runs through 2031, meaning a college football program can’t hire him without demonstrating a good reason for doing so — or else the hiring program faces its own sanctions.
Michigan State defeated Wisconsin on Oct. 15, 2022, 34-28 in double overtime, in the second game of the Jim Leonhard interim-coach era after the abrupt firing of Chryst. It was the only game in Leonhard’s first four as interim coach that the Badgers lost.
The 2022 Badgers went 7-6 overall and 4-5 in the conference, records that will remain intact despite the sanctions against MSU.
Tucker, who also played college football at Wisconsin and graduated in 1995, was fired for off-field allegations during the 2023 season. The university concluded that Tucker sexually harassed sexual-assault-victims-rights advocate Brenda Tracy.
Tucker filed a wrongful termination suit against MSU in July 2024, and Tracy has sued both Tucker and MSU. Those cases remain ongoing.
MSU self-reported these recruiting infractions to the NCAA in 2023. Khalif’s contract wasn’t renewed for the 2023 season.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Michigan State football vacates wins; former UW staffer penalized
