Michigan State football coach Mel Tucker calls Spartans a “target job” when the new deal is known.

Michigan State coach Mel Tucker, who may soon get a major new contract with the school, said MSU is a target job and never intended to “just go through it.”

Speaking at The Draymond Green Show with Green, a former Michigan State basketball star, now in the Golden State Warriors, Tucker made his first comments after Detroit Free Press said Wednesday that Michigan State plans to offer a 10-year, $ 95 million deal with the coach.

Tucker is in his second season at MSU, which is 9-1 and ranked No. 7 in the College Football Playoff rankings, entering Saturday’s game No. 4 in Ohio State. Free Press reports that Michigan State alumni Mat Ishbia and Steve St. Andre are funding a new deal that would make Tucker one of the nation’s best-paid coaches.

“In my first press conferences, I made it clear that I thought Michigan State was a target job and not a springboard,” Tucker told Green, who played at MSU from 2008-2012. “It was never my intention to come here and I just think we’re building something special here. I have huge support here to do it, and we’re on the right track.”

Tucker, 49, mentioned his roots in Big Ten as a former Wisconsin player and a native of Cleveland who began his coaching career as a graduate assistant to Michigan State for then-coach Nick Saban. He also spent 2001-2004 as a defense assistant at Ohio State.

Michigan State has not yet announced a new deal with Tucker, which currently earns $ 5.56 million and has been signed until the end of the 2024 season. In February 2020, after just one Colorado season, he was hired to replace Spartans longtime coach Mark Dantonio.

Tucker’s name has been mentioned as a potential candidate for a coaching position at LSU, announcing on October 17 that coach Ed Orgeron will not return in 2022.