Tom Izzo has been the head coach for the Michigan State men's basketball program for a long time. In fact, the 2024-2025 season will mark his 30th year as the head coach in East Lansing. If we discount a two-month stint as an assistant coach at the University of Tulsa in 1986, Izzo has been on the Michigan State coaching staff for 42 years.
Over that time, Izzo has seen and experienced more than most. He coached through the dawn of the internet, smart phones, COVID-19, name-image-and-likeness, and the transfer portal.
Izzo has seen nine different permanent or interim university presidents and worked directly or indirectly for nine athletic directors. He has lived through the expansion of the conference from just 10 teams to 11, 12, 14 and now 18.
Tom Izzo IS Michigan State basketball. In many ways, Coach Izzo is Michigan State sports. Perhaps it is simpler to say that Tom Izzo is Michigan State.
When Izzo met with members of the media on Thursday as a part of Michigan State's annual media day event, he had a lot of things to say about the current state of his team, his program, his sport, his conference and his university.
But one of the key things that Izzo talked about was the state of Tom Izzo. In January, Izzo will turn 70 years old. Many fans and members of the media have started to speculate about how many more years Izzo is going be coaching.
While he did not answer this question directly, he certainly implied that he is not finished quite yet. In fact, he seemed to get a little salty about it.
"It's such a loaded question because people want to use it against you in recruiting," Izzo said when discussing how long he will be coaching. "All the ones that are out there wanting to use that — bring it on. Bring it on any and every day of the week. Bring it on."
Izzo had hip replacement surgery in the spring. This might help to explain his feisty response to the question. Now that he is fully recovered, he says that he is "definitely healthier and happier now than I was even three or four years ago."
Coach Izzo still displays that fire that has been burning on the bench in East Lansing all those years. It still shows no sign of fading.
"A lot of these guys that are wondering what I do and whether I'm going to have as much energy as them, they don't even do half what I do," he said. "I got a lot left in the tank ... I feel great."
Izzo also said that despite the milestone of his 30th year as a head coach and his place as the longest tenured coach at the Division I level, he continues to look forward. He even pointed out that in 30 more years, he will only be slightly older than his mother (age 98) is now.
"I won't say (that I am looking forward) to the next 30 years," Izzo said. "(But) I figure I got a lot of years ahead of me."
"It's been absolute chaos"
One of the biggest challenges that any college coach faces these days is the increasingly complex landscape of name, image and likeness (NIL), collectives and the transfer portal. Izzo pointed out that all of his coaching colleagues, regardless of tenure, have struggled in this new environment.
Izzo has been a consistent critic on many of the recent changes. Thursday was no different.
"To be honest with you, I still think it's a mess," he said about the college basketball landscape.
Izzo used the word "chaos" more than once to describe the situation, and he also made it clear that the people making the decisions are not listening to coaches and the people "in the trenches" about the impact of some of these new rules. His frustration on the subject was obvious.
"I'm not going to be on those committees (anymore) that are working our butts off to figure out what's right and wrong and nobody listens to them," Izzo explained. "Those are bad committees."
Izzo has been steadfast in his opinion that on balance, many of the current changes are not a net positive for the sport or for the majority of the student-athletes.
"You're going to find more problems than good and that's what worries me about this whole thing and has worried me the whole time," he said. "If I make a rule that helps you and it hurts six other people, to me that's not a good rule. I think there is a lot of that going on. There's a lot of confusion, and there's a lot of people making decisions for the wrong reasons."
Izzo clearly doesn't think that the current landscape always helps teams or the sport as a whole either.
"(Some teams) thought, NIL-wise, go spend your money and get an instant guy," Izzo said. "Some teams did that. I don't think it worked for a lot of teams, but some teams it did, so it was chaos."
But at the end of the day, Coach Izzo is a pragmatic person who loves his players and who loves the game of basketball. Despite some of the current new hurdles, he has no intention of walking away from either.
"I've got to adjust, but that doesn't mean I have to like it," he said. "I'm just the opposite of what people think. I am big on the student-athlete. I care about the student.
"Yes, I'm critical of the way things happened and I think that there's a lot of people that made mistakes. This is what we're left with. So when in Rome, do like the Romans. That's what we're going to try to do the best we can do it."
"Now it's time to start playing basketball"
Coach Izzo did not spend the full hour talking about himself or the state of college basketball. He also spent quite a bit of time talking about his 2024-2025 team and the upcoming season.
The official beginning of the season is still over three weeks away, but Coach Izzo and even fans know a lot more about the Spartans than usual for this time of year. The current roster has already played in four exhibition games that were televised or streamed in one way or another.
Three of those games were played in Spain over the summer and last weekend the Spartans played an exhibition game in Marquette, Michigan on the campus of Northern Michigan University, Coach Izzo's alma mater, which MSU won 70-53.
Izzo feels like these experiences and the opportunity to spend time with one another has already helped his team to bond.
"We've tried to do more and more where we can make sure we keep our culture where we want it," he said. "What we have is a team where everybody gets along ... and a bunch of guys that seem to listen to each other."
Izzo seemed to relish the chance to introduce his team to the place where he grew up in the Upper Peninsula. He talked about having a pregame meal of pasties. He felt that it was important for his players to meet people who "have no entitlement in their life whatsoever as far as I'm concerned."
All of these experiences are the familiar building blocks that have formed the foundation of Spartan basketball for decades. Another one of those blocks is leadership. According to Izzo, this is still a work in progress.
"Every coach's nightmare right now is leadership," he said, "It is getting to be harder to find."
When pressed further, Izzo went into more detail about what he looks for in a leader, and how that search has changed over the years.
"Leaders are guys that number one can communicate without phones and without texts," Izzo said. "They can look somebody in the eye, and they can communicate with them. That's a big part part of leadership. It's do you have the people skills to to express yourself?
"I don't like leaders that are just lead by example people. Because if you work your tail off and you don't drag somebody else in, you haven't really led anybody. You just took care of yourself."
He went on to explain that the current focus in college athletics of "taking care yourself" can take away from the mindset needed to play a team sport. If a person is too focused on individual performance, Izzo suggested that they should have explored boxing or golf instead.
"It's we've got to play better," Izzo explained. "If we play better, more things happen. If my teammates do a better job, more things happen ... You benefit from people around you, and I think leaders are people that care about more than themselves in an era and in a time when we're a little more selfish, a little more siloed."
As for the status of player-level leadership on the 2024-2025 Michigan State roster his top candidate for that role is obvious and has been for over a year: second-year point guard Jeremy Fears Jr., who is almost fully recovered from the gunshot injury he received while at home over the Christmas holiday last year.
"I do think Jeremy someday is going to be a very, very good leader," Izzo said about Fears. "But it's going to take some time. It's hard to lead when you don't have your own game back and when you miss that much time."
In addition to the leadership question, Izzo is also trying to solve the puzzle of the starting lineup. He told reporters that "I could start nine different people right now." That is not necessarily a bad thing.
"Not enough guys have separated themselves," Izzo said. "That could be good news. In 2005, it was good news. We played a lot of people, and we ran, and we wore teams down."
But at the same time, the Spartans will function much better with a clear rotation and with the emergence of one or two go-to players. Izzo admitted that finding a guy on the roster like Tyson Walker who can get a bucket at any time is the "biggest question mark" so far this offseason.
"We've had teams where you did it by committee over the years," he said. "It's easier if you have a guy and I really believe Jaden (Akins) has the ability to do it."
Akins did not shoot the ball well in Spain or in the U.P. so far this year, but Izzo does not seem concerned about the senior guard. He pointed out that Akins is both stronger and better than he was last year and that life will be made easier by a stronger inside game and a healthy and improving Fears.
As for this fall, Izzo expects to see more separation between the players soon.
"What we're looking for right now is who in the next twom three weeks is going to come out and sustain a little bit more and get that opportunity," he said. "But I still think having numbers is a positive and I also think having depth is a positive.
"I think there's enough pieces there to be damn good. Whether they all mesh together, that's what the next period of time is going to determine ... I think we're going to be a real good team. I really do."
Michigan State will close out the exhibition season on Tuesday, Nov. 29 against Ferris State. The regular season will then kick off on Monday, Nov. 4 against Monmouth. Both games tip off at 7 p.m. Eastern Time and both will be televised on BTN Plus.
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