Michigan State continues to make moves on the recruiting operations side of the staff roster as Tyler Johnson has been hired as the director of recruiting operations.
Johnson joins the staff after the past five months as director of recruiting at Jacksonville State. Johnson joined Rich Rodriguez's in Jacksonville, Alabama this past January after being hired on in February 2022 to Steve Sarkisian's staff at Texas.
During her tenure as recruiting operations coordinator with the Longhorns, Johnson played an important role in helping Texas land the No. 3-ranked recruiting class for 2023 prior to her departure from the program. Texas nabbed notable big names such as Arch Manning in the class, and had three total five-star signees, 13 four-stars and an average of 3.76 stars for all 25 signees of the class.
Johnson arrived in Austin after seven months on staff during her first stint at Jacksonville State as the on-campus recruiting coordinator from August 2021 until leaving for Texas in February 2022. She attended Tennessee State University for her undergraduate degree and obtained a master's degree from Jacksonville State. Johnson worked in various roles with the Tigers during her time in school before leaving for Jacksonville State.
Johnson's hiring makes for yet another major addition to the Spartans' recruiting staff since Mark Diethorn officially took over as executive director of player personnel and recruiting on May 1. Diethorn was hired after Michigan State parted ways with former general manager/executive director of player personnel and recruiting Saeed Khalif, whose contract was not renewed earlier this year.
Other recent hires to the staff include Sam Kukura as assistant director of player personnel. Kukura joined MSU after the past two seasons with Pittsburgh. He has also spent time as tight ends coach at Slippery Rock University (Division II) and as a graduate assistant/special teams quality control assistant at Akron.
Sean Levy remains the director of player personnel. He was originally hired as player personnel coordinator by head coach Mel Tucker, which was his role in 2020 and 2021 before becoming assistant director of player personnel in 2022 and taking over his current post in 2023.
Also joining the staff at MSU is Jenna Learn. Recently hired on as the director of on-campus recruiting, Learn most recently worked for former South Florida coach Jeff Scott. With the Bulls, she ran on-campus recruiting operations starting in May 2022 until Scott was let go after the 2022 season. Prior to that, Learn was a football operations and events intern at USF dating back to February 2021, while she was still an undergraduate student in Tampa.
Learn will work with on-campus recruiting coordinator Diamond Boston who was also retained from the previous staff by Diethorn.
Meanwhile, Darius Hicks has been promoted to director of scouting after most recently joining the staff this spring as a defensive analyst. Hicks arrived in East Lansing from Southeast Missouri State University and he focused on transfer portal evaluations and recruiting when he first arrived to MSU's campus.
Prior to Southeast Missouri State, Hicks spent four seasons with his alma mater, Morningside University, in numerous roles, including defensive backs coach, special teams coordinator and student coach. He was an All-Great Plains Conference honoree his senior season and played defensive back for the Mustangs collegiately. Morningside was the NAIA runner-up his junior season.
The Spartans also added creative director Derek Blalock and two assistant creative directors ā Dylan Gray and Matt Whipple ā to the program's support staff over the past several weeks.
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