Michigan State Football Parting Ways With Another Staff Member

An eventful offseason continued for Michigan State Football on Saturday when news broke that GM Saeed Khalif would not be retained by the program after his contract expires in the coming weeks.

Corey Robinson, of 247Sports' Spartan Tailgate, was the first to report the news of Khalif's pending departure.

Khalif was hired by head coach Mel Tucker as the program's Director of Player Personnel in June 2021 to oversee the Spartans' entire recruiting department. In 2022, his title was changed to General Manager/Executive Director of Player Personnel and Recruiting, as Tucker turned his program into a more NFL-like organizational structure.

Khalif's role within Michigan State's program mainly consisted of creating a recruiting board for the coaching staff, scheduling on-campus recruiting visits, planning for the coaches' recruiting plans on the road and hiring the recruiting staff below him for specific duties.

Michigan State has landed back-to-back Top 25 recruiting classes in each of the last two seasons. The Spartans' most recent class, 2023, was ranked No. 23 in the country by 247Sports and featured eight four-star prospects, the most MSU has signed in a single class since 2016.

However, while the 2023 class featured a lot of high-end talent, Michigan State only signed 18 total prospects in this last recruiting cycle. According to 247Sports insider Corey Robinson, the low number of signees may have been due to a lack of "back-up plans" when the Spartans missed on some of their other big swings in the class.

Michigan State had a monumental month of June when it came to some of the elite prospects who took official visits to Michigan State. Like all programs across college football, they landed some and missed on most. That’s how it goes. Where the problems arguably came from is the lack of accurate understanding of where MSU sat some of those recruitments following those visits, and then also compounding that mistake by not having enough suitable back-up plans in that 250-600 ranking range.

While most people in the industry had many of those recruitments trending elsewhere, Khalif’s department often felt that they were higher on a prospect’s list and ultimately chose to not pursue other top targets as heavily as they should have, resulting in them missing on their backup targets as well, in the cases that they actually had some at that position. MSU scheduled 36 official visits for the month of June. By signing day, only 6 of those prospects were part of the class. If one is going to have that type of all-out approach with prospects possibly out of their league, the key is to make sure you're still prioritizing kids just a tick below their talent level at the same time.

Michigan State's creative team and recruiting department have both undergone several staff changes over the last two cycles. Robinson reported that the creative teams role in the recruiting department "was a primary source of frustration." He also noted that the Spartans struggled to replace some of the talent that has left the recruiting department over the last couple years.

"To reiterate, there isn’t any sort of definitive indication that the parting of ways was specifically driven by the aforementioned factors, but that’s the only available context at this time that could provide an explanation for the decision, and would justify such a decision being made," Robinson wrote.

In addition to Khalif's pending departure, Michigan State will also not renew the contract of Jensen Gebhardt, who served as the Recruiting Operations Coordinator and was considered Khalif's right-hand man.

While Tucker conducts a national search for Khalif's replacement, Assistant Director of Player Personnel Sean Levy will take over primary duties in the recruiting department. Levy has been in East Lansing for the entirety of Tucker's tenure as head coach at Michigan State.