EAST LANSING, Mich. — Back on July 19, 1983, Tom Izzo, an impassioned 28-year-old ex-Division II college basketball player, was named a part-time assistant men’s basketball coach at Michigan State University. He’d spent the previous five years as an assistant at Northern Michigan, his alma mater in Michigan’s far-flung upper peninsula.
Moving to a low-level job on Jud Heathcote’s staff at Michigan State, a place four years removed from a national title, was another world. Izzo took the big step up to Division I after convincing the longtime Spartan head coach to hire him. The salary: $7,500 and the chance to pursue a master’s degree in recreation at MSU. Izzo replaced Frank Rourke, who handled administrative issues for Heathcote for two seasons but resigned to spend more time on his graduate studies. Such things happened back then.
Only three months later, Izzo’s role expanded. Edgar Wilson, a former MSU player under Gus Ganakas, resigned from Heathcote’s staff to pursue business. He and his brother-in-law saw an opportunity in the videodisc retail space and went for it. Again, another time. Izzo moved to a part-time coaching role and Silas Taylor, the school’s assistant director for minority programs, was placed in the administrative position.
Izzo threw himself into the job. Totally and completely. Every waking hour. Lived in the office. A maniac on the recruiting trail. In time, he rose to be Heathcote’s heir apparent and, after bypassing head-coaching overtures from the likes of Central Michigan and the University of Nevada-Reno, was named as Heathcote’s successor in March 1993. He said then, “I had always hoped this day would happen,” even though he’d still have to wait two more years for his turn.
Following the 1994-95 season, at 67 years old, Heathcote retired. The Spartans were coming off a 22-6 season and second-place finish in the Big Ten, but time was ready to move forward. Despite finally getting his chance at the job after 13 years as an assistant, it irked Izzo that some onlookers thought his boss was a relic. That spring, he told Sports Illustrated’s Jack McCallum: “It drives me crazy when people call Jud old-fashioned. We run more than any team in the Big Ten. There’s nothing conservative about him except his insistence that things be done right.”
Now it’s Tom Izzo who’s 67.
His office phone rings.
“Basketball,” he says, like he’s running a rec center in 1985.
“Yeah,” Izzo responds, nodding. “OK, yep. Got it.”
He hangs up. It was Lupe, his wife. “Pretty sure she’s the only one who calls on that line,” he says, squinting, shuffling through a few messages left atop his desk.
Izzo in 2022 is, in so many ways, a living caesura. A marker between eras. He’s a member of every Hall of Fame imaginable. He’s the Big Ten’s all-time winningest coach. He is, at this point, so synonymous with Michigan State that the school’s new high-end football practice facility is being named for him. Yes, the Tom Izzo Football Building, projected to cost $67 million, is presently under construction.
Yet, despite a résumé clearly approaching its postscript, Izzo could, in theory, remain as Spartans head coach for … well, forever. In August, the university announced a new five-year rolling contract paying Izzo over $6 million annually. The deal automatically renews after each season, meaning Izzo will have a five-year contract as head coach until he or the school decides otherwise.
But facts are facts, especially when it comes to time. Izzo will turn 68 in January. Even in a conference with no coach under 40, he’s about 15 years older than the average age (51.8) of his Big Ten peers. He ranks as the sixth-oldest active high-major coach in the game. Only Jim Boeheim (77), Leonard Hamilton (74), Jim Larrañaga (73), Bob Huggins (69) and Rick Barnes (68) can pull rank.
Izzo does, despite what some may think, understand reality. And he’s willing to sit here and discuss the inevitability. He does acknowledge that, indeed, he will eventually retire, and someone else will have to coach Michigan State men’s basketball.
But when? And how?
Under the intermittent moonlight of a coaching career few can imagine ever ending, Izzo has this way of answering big questions with withholding smiles.
Then he narrows his stare and sounds like his younger self.
“Being considered an old throwback?” he says, “That pisses me off because I’m not. I think I am progressing. Really. I just don’t agree with how things are done now, is all.”
So we’re back where we started.
Most of us need oxygen. Tom Izzo needs chaos. He doesn’t compartmentalize. It’s everything, all at once, always.
On a recent visit, the lines on Izzo’s face were the same, but the stories were different. This time, a current Michigan State player’s parent called Izzo at 7 that morning needing advice, an ex-player reached out asking for financial help, and calls were pouring in from all directions regarding a seismic shakeup at the highest levels of the university — a controversy that, in time, would result in yet another turnover in MSU’s president’s office. Most personally, Mike Garland, Izzo’s former assistant coach and closest confidant, was recovering from a major health scare and staying at Izzo’s home to account for the needed extra care.
Oh, and on top of all that, there was Izzo’s unceasing resentment — to put it lightly — with the general direction of college basketball.
Izzo rattled off all these problems and headaches. Zigging, zagging, flying. One topic to the next. He spoke, as he does, about the volume of items with the same randomness that they occur. Then, out the door. Practice at 2 p.m. Then back in the office. More talking. Venting on the transfer portal. Venting on the NCAA’s handling of name, image and likeness. Mad at the world. Him vs. Them. Then a few laughs. Then a knock at the door. Originally, a couple meetings were scheduled for the afternoon. Now the slate was running late and likely to creep into the evening. Nothing new around here.
This was simply a random Wednesday in late September.
A day that would be followed by another just like it.
And another.
And another.
This is how Izzo exists. A lot of coaches spend insane hours on the job. Work-life balance doesn’t win Big Ten championships, folks! This is what’s required, or at least that’s what these types tell themselves.
But Izzo has long operated on another level.
Doug Wojcik, presently the longest-tenured member of the Michigan State coaching staff, with a first stint from 2003 to 2005, and a return in 2018 following head-coaching stops at Tulsa and College of Charleston, tries his best to explain.
“That’s why he is who he is,” Wojcik said. “He’s not afraid to spend an inordinate amount of time on whatever needs it. It’s amazing how much he’s put into it. Realize that.”
Wojcik, a 58-year-old former player and longtime assistant coach at the Naval Academy, stressed the point. Realize that.
“I don’t think many people are willing to do what he’s done,” Wojcik continued. “The sheer time he puts into everything — dealing with a situation or issue, nurturing new relationships. He’s willing to do all of those things and many, many people are not willing to do. That is part of his brilliance. And when there’s something wrong, he’s willing to beat his head against a wall until he fixes it.”
That’s what’s in the soil. All great coaches are inherently wired differently, but if there’s a single thread among them, it’s the desire to marry control and problem-solving. Izzo’s just happens to be one tied in a bowline around East Lansing.
It’s a rope that’s been tested in recent years.
Four years ago, the Larry Nassar scandal pulled the school apart. And if you’re thinking to yourself, Nassar’s name has no place in this story, then you underestimate the ways that case still reverberates in Izzo’s mind. All of it. From what Nassar did, to the deep sadness and torment of the MSU community, to the accompanying overhauling of university leadership, to his own program’s being interrogated, to the media coverage — it still flows through Izzo like a river ready to crest. There have been other uproars, other disruptions, other incursions in recent years, all joining in the torrent.
There have been deaths. Some unthinkably tragic. A star player’s brother. An ex-player gone too soon.
There was so much lost to COVID-19. Izzo swears, dammit, that Cassius Winston and the 2019-20 team might’ve won the whole thing.
There have been recent seasons that weren’t up to the standard. The pandemic-ravaged 2020-21 season was always sideways. This past season, only slightly better. Those teams finished eighth and seventh in the Big Ten – the program’s worst back-to-back seasons since Jud’s days — 1987-88 (eighth) and 1988-89 (eighth).
All these layers. All so fresh.
Probably enough to make a 67-year-old happy to leave.
Instead, Izzo, as always, carries on hell-bent to fix everything. It’s all he’s capable of doing because he’s driven by two primary influences — 1) force of personality and 2) an instinct for self-preservation that’s nearly unmatched. His personal ex cathedra invokes the kind of loyalty that weathers storms and keeps brush fires to a kindle. It’s a signature of coaches who last for eons in a single space. In this case, Izzo’s 40 years at Michigan State have spanned eight presidents and nine athletic directors.
All of this — the inherent need to “fix” things, the need to defy convention, the unflinching drive to prove he can win — comprises Izzo’s state of being entering his 28th season as Spartans head coach. He is among the last of his era’s dons. Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Jim Calhoun, Tubby Smith, Lon Kruger, Gary Williams, Jay Wright … they’re out. Izzo, Boeheim, Rick Pitino, Huggins, John Calipari, Kelvin Sampson … those types, they remain, for now.
The game will change when they’re gone. So one has to wonder when that will be.
Asked about the broad notion of “retirement,” Izzo doesn’t think of the totality of his career. He is, instead, stuck in the box of recent history.
“I’ve still got unfinished business, in my mind,” he says. “End this way? These last four, five years? Ain’t happening. I ain’t doing it.”
The temperature rises. Izzo pauses. He clarifies …
“Now, I won’t stay longer than I should,” he goes on. “If I don’t want to come to work, you won’t see me keep showing up. I don’t mean that to insult anyone, but if I’m not going out recruiting and doing this, doing that, being on the road, then I won’t keep (working).”
He thinks on it.
“You know, at 67, I’m healthy, I still come in to work early, I still stay late, I haven’t lost any of that,” he says. “The day I do, I will walk. I won’t stay a year too long. And maybe some people think I already have, but I still enjoy the players, the coaching, the camaraderie, the challenge.”
So, three years? Five? Ten?
Izzo has seen how others went out. He’s seen coaches he admired who couldn’t let go and allowed their later years to rewrite their legacies. Gene Keady’s hall of fame career ended with him missing the NCAA Tournament in four of his final five seasons before resigning in 2005. It was eight years after Purdue had named the Mackey Arena court in his honor.
“Didn’t like that,” Izzo says.
He’s watched some stay too long, turn into old cranks, end their careers with infamous gaffes. Woody Hayes comes to mind. Bobby Knight.
“Didn’t like that.”
But he’s also seen some walk away too early and resent doing so.
“Didn’t like that.”
So who did it right?
“Al McGuire!”
Sure, that’s a helluva way to go. McGuire won the 1977 national championship at age 48 and walked away. He’d decided prior to the NCAA Tournament to leave coaching and become co-chairman of a sporting goods manufacturer. He later gave TV a try. It all worked out.
But Izzo is smart enough to know that things don’t always work out. He understands that a fairy tale ending — his long, long pursuit of a second national title to hang alongside his 2000 conquest — might never come.
In truth, you could make the case that the best thing to happen to Michigan State basketball is Izzo never winning that second championship. Doing so would’ve made it all the easier to leave years ago. Maybe he’d have looked a little closer when jobs like Kentucky and Kansas came open. Maybe he’d have taken one of those NBA offers that crossed his desk. That 2010 MSU team drove him so crazy he could’ve bailed right then. In an alternate universe, he could’ve been hired (and probably eventually fired) as the Cleveland Cavaliers coach a decade ago.
But Izzo stayed. He couldn’t not be Michigan State’s head basketball coach.
That look in the mirror, when it comes to telling himself it’s finally time, will be the hardest.
“In my opinion, Tom knows that he can do a lot of other things,” said Greg Kampe, Izzo’s longtime friend and the college basketball’s longest tenured coach (34 years at Oakland). “Tom could be the lead commentator on ‘(ESPN) Gameday.’ He could be the commissioner of the Big Ten. Tom could be the president of the NCAA. He’d have support for all that, seriously. And I think he knows that. But what he can’t see, is he can’t see himself not doing what he does. He’s coached for 40-plus years. He thrives at it. It’s what makes him wake up in the morning. It’s who he is.”
While onlookers (and writers) study Izzo and try to figure out how these final chapters might play out, his contemporaries aren’t even reading the book yet.
Kampe, 67, said flatly, “he’s not going anywhere.”
Boeheim guesses five to 10 years. He thinks even asking about Izzo’s retirement timeline is nonsense.
“People have been doing this to me for 15 years,” Boeheim said. “To guys like us, it’s just noise. Tom clearly has the same fire and determination and work ethic that he’s always had. Why would he even think of retiring?”
Roy Williams, who retired in April 2021, three months prior to his 71st birthday, believes “Tommy,” as he calls Izzo, “has many, many years left in him.” Williams saw it firsthand last season during a visit. The two men — with 17 Final Fours between them — were only four years apart but in different places in their lives.
“Look, I wanted to coach till I croaked, but when I retired, it was because I didn’t think I was doing the job as well as I was once capable of anymore,” Williams added. “I don’t think Tommy is close to being there yet.”
For those at Michigan State, meanwhile, the guesswork varies. Some say it might be coming sooner than we think. Others say three-to-five years sounds about right. Still others say the man might never have it in him to leave.
And Izzo?
“I can honestly say I’ve never seriously considered it,” he says.
There is, though, a caveat.
“But I certainly have frustratingly wondered to myself, why am I doing this?” he adds. “I don’t need the money in any way. I don’t live a lavish lifestyle. I don’t have to do this.”
Yet he does. Why?
“I worry most about … what would I do?”
(Aaron J. Thornton / Getty Images)
The band is playing. Outside, over near Spartans Stadium, trumpets blare and drums pound in preparation for an upcoming football Saturday in East Lansing. Students are back, walking amid leaves the color of cantaloupes and carrots. There’s an undeniable romance of a Midwest college campus in autumn, that’s why we write about it this way. All the clichés of new beginnings. Half of Izzo’s office is completely windowed, letting it all in.
“I love it and that’s real,” he says. “Whether anybody believes it or not, I don’t really give a … .”
So why would he ever leave? Well, because history always cedes to the future, no matter who you are.
That, when it comes to Izzo’s lack of actual immortality as head coach, comes with heavy subtext. Envisioning himself retiring requires imagining someone else’s beginning. The last time a succession occurred at Michigan State, the program was bequeathed to a rightful heir — him! — and all was clean and easy.
The next one?
“It’s funny you ask that because nobody ever actually says it to me out loud,” Izzo says.
When it comes to who’s next, Izzo claims he “hasn’t worried about that at all,” which is impossible to believe. The Spartan program is an extension of himself. Thus, Izzo’s departure, whether it’s next year or in 2040, will amount to a blood transfusion.
There exists intense interest around who will replace Izzo. Not because it feels imminent, but because it’s wildly intriguing. Waystar Royco has nothing on Michigan State.
As of now, no one in Izzo’s large coaching tree has distinguished himself to warrant front-runner status. But the idea of going outside the family seems unimaginable.
Hence, the questions follow. Will Izzo’s replacement be Izzo’s pick? How much sway will some larger-than-life Michigan State voices — Magic Johnson, Draymond Green, Steve Smith, etc. — carry in the decision?
To those coaches eyeing the possible job opening, there’s the reality that Michigan State is a premier gig with a likely $3 million per year price tag. But being the coach that follows Izzo might be … messy.
The list of direct descendants possibly in line for the job provides no obvious answer. Longtime assistant Dwayne Stephens, a 1993 MSU grad, is a first-year head coach at Western Michigan, a program that might be glacial to turn around. Dane Fife, an eight-year member of Izzo’s staff, jumped to Indiana in 2021, but was let go by Mike Woodson after one season. First-year MSU assistant coach Mark Montgomery, a ’92 grad, is in his second stint on Izzo’s staff, but only returned after going 124-170 in 10 seasons as Northern Illinois head coach. Wojcik, another current assistant, posted a winning record (178-121) in nine years as a head coach, but is 58 years old and carries residual baggage from College of Charleston.
Other notable members of the Izzo tree … Tom Crean? Brian Gregory? Jim Boylen? Stan Heath? None seem particularly plausible.
Drew Valentine is an interesting name, but he’s only 31, has spent one season as a head coach — going 25-8 at Loyola Chicago — and is about to lead a program on a big step up from the Missouri Valley Conference to the Atlantic 10.
Point is, there’s no easy answer. There’s no Izzo.
All this? Big stuff. Heavy. Burdensome.
Izzo, as you might imagine, doesn’t exactly engage in the conversation.
For him, it might just be easier to keep on keeping on.
“I still feel like I have a lot to give,” he says. “I want to see if I can do it the way I want to do it.”
This brings us to the 2022-23 Spartans. They can compete for a top spot in a wide-open Big Ten, but don’t exactly carry Final Four expectations. The makeup is intriguing. Primary pieces are known commodities (Tyson Walker, A.J. Hoggard, Malik Hall, Joey Hauser) and emerging pieces are in the fold (Jaden Akins, Pierre Brooks, Jaxon Kohler).
Izzo, who’s been known in the preseason to downplay good teams and over-pump bad teams, plays this one right down the middle.
“You know, I really like this team, and I think we have a chance,” he says.
The roster, though, is also not particularly deep, a byproduct of Izzo declining to engage in this year’s transfer portal allotment. He says he’d rather roll with who he has. When asked about fearing injuries in this season’s short rotation, Izzo punches up an eyebrow and replies: “We’ll be smarter about it, but I don’t live my life thinking I’m gonna die, you know? We’re gonna go.”
This year’s team will try to win Izzo his 11th Big Ten championship, enough to match Knight’s all-time conference record.
And if the 2022-23 group doesn’t do it, well, what’s coming next is awfully enticing.
See, Izzo might not like the current world of college basketball, but he can exist in it. Hell, two of his five projected starters this season previously transferred into the program.
And NIL? Michigan State’s athletic department has been as proactive and aggressive as anyone in the Big Ten. Izzo’s current 2023 recruiting haul is ranked No. 3 in the country and comprised of four players ranked in the top 75 of the class. It’s hard to imagine a coach not sticking around to guide the likes of Xavier Booker, Jeremy Fears, Coen Carr and Gehrig Normand. This isn’t just a good class. It could conceivably be one of the program’s best.
As Izzo says, “When you have a good recruiting class, it brings light to the future.”
That means the end can’t be near, right?
This is where you want Izzo to say something concrete, or something discernible, or something that even provides a clue. Instead, it’s the same old smile, one that’s either hiding answers or stopping him from saying, “I don’t know.”
Like so much of Izzo’s career, it’s complicated. At this point, he has as many reasons to stay as he does to go.
All that’s known for sure is that, when the time comes, there will be no farewell tour. Izzo was there when Jud did it. He has no intention to do the same.
One day, he’ll simply decide it’s over.
And that will be the end.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Grant Halverson, Eakin Howard, Justin Casterline / Getty Images)
