There will never be another Tom Izzo.
It’s admittedly a bit strange to say that about a person who is still living, still breathing, still coaching. In fact, he’ll be on the sidelines later Tuesday night, as his 14th-ranked Spartans host No. 13 Purdue in a matchup that could shake up the top of the Big Ten standings. Izzo has swatted away questions about retirement for a while now, reiterating ahead of this season — his 30th as the head coach of the Michigan State men’s basketball program — that last spring’s hip replacement surgery left him feeling “healthier and happier now” than he was years prior.
But none of that means we should take Izzo for granted, certainly not as we sit here a few days removed from his 354th Big Ten win, which pushed him past former Indiana legend Bob Knight to become the winningest coach in league history. Izzo is already a Hall of Famer, but he’s also one of the last of a dying breed.
We aren’t going to see one coach stay at one school for 42 years like Izzo has — 30 years as the head coach, 12 years before that as an assistant. He is synonymous with Michigan State the school, not just Michigan State the basketball team. His name is literally on the university’s new state-of-the-art football building. He’s spent more than half of his 70 years on this planet in East Lansing, pouring himself into that community and its basketball program.
There are plenty of basketball-related achievements we should discuss, I suppose. There’s the 2000 national championship and the eight trips to the Final Four. He’s taken the Spartans to a record 26 consecutive NCAA Tournaments while winning 10 Big Ten regular-season championships.
“I’d give up the Big Ten wins record for two more NCAA Tournament championships,” Izzo said.
Knight, of course, had those three national championships to go along with all of those Big Ten victories. And that does eat at Izzo, even though he’s got one national title to his name. It’s been a quarter of a century since he cut down that net. He’s come agonizingly close to getting another title, sometimes surprisingly and other times with teams we all expected to reach the Final Four. But he’s only reached the final game twice in his career.
The sport has changed in big and small ways over the four-plus decades Izzo has roamed the sidelines at Michigan State. He’s endured them and adapted alongside the sport’s shift toward professionalism, even while he’s hated certain parts about how it all works. Even as so many of his Hall of Fame peers have bailed on college basketball.
Izzo’s best teams have always been tough, physical and veteran-laden. He will tell you that, just like he’ll tell you how he feels about anything and everything. He’s lamented the sport’s cheaters. He’s been frustrated both with rules regarding one-and-done players and the transfer portal. He hates social media. He’s unapologetically emotional. He and former Michigan coach John Beilein liked each other so much it became difficult for each of them to actually hate their rival.
Tom Izzo is many things as a basketball coach. But he’s also the first person to step up when his community is hurting. After three Michigan State students were killed in an on-campus shooting in 2023, it was Izzo who helped lead the healing at the vigil. He cried on the bench after the Spartans won their first game after the shooting.
He, too, is the kind of guy who will wear ugly Christmas sweaters alongside his pal, longtime Oakland coach Greg Kampe, for their annual December games. He’ll play the accordion at his live radio show each year ahead of Christmas, forcing his players to sing carols with fans amid the festivities. (I’ve witnessed the annual tradition in person; it’s lovely.) Izzo stays in such frequent contact with so many of his former players that it’s never surprising to run into one on campus while popping into the head coach’s office.
Izzo has always been one of the game’s best coaches. We all know the jokes about January, February, Izzo. We know how good his teams are on the second game of an NCAA Tournament weekend. That all folds into his legend and his significance to the sport. But it is everything else that makes him so special and such a singular character in the history of college basketball. It’s that he never left East Lansing. It’s that he secretly would love to coach the football team in addition to his hoops team. It’s that he’s willing to scream at officials — his face beet red — on national television … in a Grinch sweater.
And that is why we’ll never see another Tom Izzo. He’s one of a kind and now, fittingly, one of one in the league he’s called home for decades.
