On a sunny Thursday morning, Michigan State University football coach Mel Tucker strolled through tomato fields at a farm in Immokalee, Florida, toured its processing plants and loaded baskets of bright green fruit into a truck.
It was a private event thrown by the school to promote its migrant student services program, which provides financial aid and support to farmworkers seeking college degrees. After the April 28, 2022, tour, disclosed in records obtained by USA TODAY this week, Tucker met with community leaders and alumni.
That night, Tucker would make the now-infamous phone call from his hotel room in nearby Naples, during which he is accused of masturbating and making unwanted sexual comments to Brenda Tracy, a prominent rape survivor and activist he had hired to speak to his team about sexual violence.
Yet, when Tucker met with the university’s outside investigator in March for his interview in the sexual harassment case against him, he insisted the trip was not work-related – a claim the investigator would disprove in her report.
It’s just one example of Tucker failing to keep his story straight at the most consequential moment of his career.
With his job, reputation and the roughly $80 million left on his contract at stake, Tucker repeatedly made false statements to the investigator and misled her about basic facts, such as his location during the phone call and the date it occurred, a USA TODAY review of more than 1,200 pages of case documents found.
The...
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