Tom Izzo Is Not Happy About Michigan State's Direction After Departure of President, Athletic Director

The Spartans coach made his feelings clear Monday.

When coach Tom Izzo speaks, Michigan State fans across the world listen. | Robert Killips/Lansing State Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

At Michigan State, men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo has outlasted six university presidents, seven athletic directors, and nine head coaches (full-time and interim). When he speaks, Spartans fans around the world listen.

On Monday, Izzo spoke, and Spartans fans listened.

Chris Solari of the Detroit Free Press posted a video to social media in which he asked Izzo about two recent departures that have rocked the Michigan State community: president Kevin Guskiewicz leaving for Clemson, and athletic director J Batt leaving for Kentucky after only a year.

“I can’t stand what’s going on,” Izzo said. “I’m not gonna over-talk about it now but I am in the very near future.”

Despite that promise, Izzo alluded a good degree to Michigan State’s administrative dysfunction

“This is just self-inflicted. We just lost the best president that might have ever been here, maybe,” Izzo said. “There’s other dominoes that get affected when things go wrong like that.”

Guskiewicz, a renowned scholar of sports medicine, had served as Michigan State’s president since 2024. His departure for Clemson, a school with around a quarter of Michigan State’s endowment, surprised the world of higher education. While departing, Guskiewicz criticized the university’s board of trustees for its dysfunction.

“I think 600,000 living alums better start rallying together,” Izzo said cryptically after again insisting he would speak more on the topic at a later date. “If there’s ever a time where we need to rally together, it’s now. And that’s all 600,000, it ain’t Tom Izzo—I’m not an alum. ... I’m a very invested stakeholder.”

Despite his long association with the Spartans, Izzo played collegiately for Northern Michigan in his native Upper Peninsula.

“What happened with our president is ridiculous,” Izzo finished. “He said it. We know the reasons. I’m ashamed. I’m disgusted. ... Spartan Nation better stand up.”

Michigan State has churned through leadership since the Larry Nassar scandal rocked the university almost a decade ago

The arrest, trial and conviction of Nassar—a doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State unmasked as the most prolific sex offender in the history of sports—forced from their posts the university’s president (Lou Anna Simon) and athletic director (Mark Hollis).

The road to institutional recovery since has been rocky. Ex-Michigan governor John Engler replaced Simon in an interim capacity—only for his behavior toward Nassar’s victims to catch up with him as well. Stony Brook’s Samuel Stanley took over in 2019, only to resign in 2022. After another interim period led by oncologist Teresa Woodruff, Guskiewicz took charge in `24.

“There is no one steering the ship,” Jane Bunnell, a professor of voice in the university’s music school, told Julia Roeder of the State News (the university’s student newspaper) on May 29. “We are constantly shifting priorities depending on who is in the president’s chair.”

It’s not easy to get a university’s music department and men’s basketball coach on the same page. And yet, so it goes at Michigan State, which must get its priorities in order or risk falling arms in the higher-ed and college athletics arms races alike.

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