EAST LANSING, Mich. — From courtrooms to Congress, college athletics has spent the past half decade decrying how name, image and likeness rights for players and the transfer portal have adversely affected competition, if not supposedly destroyed the soul of collegiate competition.
Monied mercenaries have ended the concept of team. Transfers leaving after each season mean players no longer play for each other. Coaches are thus incapable of building and teaching. It’s a wonder they even still bother with March Madness.
The man standing Tuesday behind a lectern, previewing his latest trip to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, has never been shy to chime in with his complaints.
That is Tom Izzo’s prerogative, one built from his perspective. Coaching these days is no doubt tougher, more time consuming and more frustrating than ever — managing a roster is akin to Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill.
And yet … Izzo is 70 years old and not just still coaching, but coaching No. 2 seed Michigan State in the South Region in his 27th consecutive NCAA tournament with a real shot at his ninth Final Four.
For all that has changed in college basketball, and for all the claims that said change was running old-school coaches out while making team-first programs impossible for anyone of any age to create, the reality born from the results tells an opposite story.
The greats find a way.
Of the eight teams seeded either No. 1 or No. 2 in this year’s men’s bracket, five are led by men 65 or older.
There’s Izzo and his Spartans, who won the Big Ten regular-season title by three games.
There’s St. John’s (No. 2 seed in the West), coached by 72-year-old Rick Pitino, winner of the Big East tournament and regular season (by three games).
There’s Tennessee (No. 2 seed in the Midwest), coached by 70-year-old Rick Barnes, after a 27-win season in the SEC.
There’s Houston (No. 1 seed in the Midwest), coached by 69-year-old Kelvin Sampson, winner of the Big 12 tournament and regular season (by four games).
And there is Auburn (No. 1 seed in the South), coached by 65-year-old Bruce Pearl, regular-season champion of the historically strong SEC.
“I’ll tell you why,” Izzo told ESPN on Tuesday. “I think as hard as it’s been on everybody, as impossible as it’s been to deal with, the experienced guys have been there and done that. And then it is, ‘Can they adjust?’ Some can, some can’t.”
Change might make people uncomfortable. Something different might be difficult to accept. But no matter what the lawyers or lobbyists claim, the sky is very much not falling. College hoops is still college hoops.
“I kind of wavered a couple of years, too,” Izzo said of coaching in this era. “Then I just said, ‘You may have to make adjustments, but the meat and potatoes of it are, can you defend, rebound, run, take care of the ball? Can you motivate kids to do something they didn’t even think they could do?’ That is still the essence of this whole deal.”
The new era is by no means without its flaws and frustrations. It has its benefits as well. Whereas the game was once dominated by so-called blue-blood programs, the power of Nike and Adidas to stock preferred rosters has been mitigated as once under-the-table money is out in the open. The playing field has leveled. New teams are winning.
Meanwhile, the transfer portal allowed Pitino to quickly rebuild St. John’s with veteran talent. Pearl and Barnes brought their leading scorers in from Morehead State and North Florida, respectively. For players, how hard you have worked and how good you have become, not how highly ranked a recruit you once were, determines where you get to play. Those who seek great coaching and strong programs now have the ability to do so, even late in their careers.
College athletics has long bowed to the howls of set-in-their-ways, establishment coaches resistant to change, rather than to let developments play out. Innovation is often the enemy. Nostalgia serves as a north star.
The NCAA is an organization, after all, that banned the dunk from 1967 to 1976, just as integration began sweeping the sport, as the new book “Magic in the Air” by Mike Sielski deftly details. The dunk wasn’t something James Naismith intended, or so the argument went. Either that or they feared a new, high-flying style of play in general — and UCLA center Lew Alcindor in particular.
It’s no wonder that player payments and movement have been greeted with fear. Anytime an older coach retires — often throwing up his hands at the state of affairs — it’s hailed as proof that this is somehow unsustainable and the end times for college athletics has arrived.
These Spartans are nowhere near Izzo’s most talented, but they are tenacious as a unit. MSU has had nine different leading scorers this season and the players often defend and rebound as if their next meal depends on it.
“Their connectability and togetherness is as good as 99 percent of the teams I’ve had,” Izzo said.
This isn’t supposed to occur anymore, the critics have claimed — not with NIL dollars flowing and rosters flipping at season’s end. Yet all over the country, it is. Those other high seeds — Duke, Florida and Alabama — are coached by younger men, but play in the same vein.
Maybe it turns out today’s players are just as interested as past generations in winning championships and being part of something bigger than themselves. Maybe they’re even better at seeking out the coaches who can provide it.
And if they make a buck along the way, even better.
“I always say, there are a million ways to win games, but the higher you get up on that pyramid, there’s still the basics,” Izzo said. “Just as there are for successful businessmen. Different jobs, different technology, but you still have to do the things that got you there.
“How does that kid trust us when he has parents and agents in his ear?” he continued. “I figured out, maybe I had to spend more time to convince them. Kids don’t trust people anymore.”
Izzo set up more team bonding, especially off the court with trips ranging from an August barnstorming tour of Spain to a Detroit Tigers game. He doubled down on individual communication.
“I want them to see me as the other side of the guy, but sooner or later I’ve got to say, ‘Listen, I’ve been there, done that. If you want to listen to those idiots over there, or you can take a chance on me. But you have to figure it out.'”
And so here comes another March. Izzo. Pitino. Barnes. Sampson. Pearl.
Same old coaches, same old tricks.
