Detroit — The president is leaving, the athletic director is leaving, the football coach has barely been around long enough to get his name on a parking spot. And understandably, the basketball coach is furious.
Of course Tom Izzo is much more than Michigan State’s basketball coach. He’s the face of the school, the emotional touchstone. He’s been there 31 years as head coach, fully vested to speak for the university and from the heart. He must wonder sometimes if anyone listens.
A.D. J Batt, who arrived last June as a celebrated hire from Georgia Tech, is bolting for Kentucky. President Kevin Guskiewicz, who arrived two-plus years ago from North Carolina, recently accepted the same position at Clemson. Guskiewicz and Batt were ambitious and connected, eager to lead MSU through the treacherous landscape of college athletics, and just as they geared up, they felt pushed away.
When Pat Fitzgerald was introduced as the new football coach last December, the excited talk was about “alignment” across the university, from top to bottom. Barely six months later, the offices are empty again and MSU is stuck with a confusing disaster.
“I’ve had it,” Izzo told reporters Monday. “This is self-inflicted. We just lost the best president that may have ever been here, one of the best. And there are other dominoes that get affected when things go wrong like that. I’m very upset about it. And I’m sick of it.”
Many Spartans presumably are sick of it, from alums to students to the Hall of Fame coach who’s 71, and contrary to his abundant energy, won’t be around forever. Mostly, people are disgusted by the infighting, petty politics and lack of a clear, shared vision. Much of the ire is directed at the Board of Trustees, the eight-member panel entrusted with protecting MSU’s interests. Governing boards at universities are important oversight tools, but MSU has historically been rife with disagreement.
Guskiewicz cited Board dysfunction as a primary reason for his departure, even spurning an offer to double his salary to stay. In his resignation letter, he blasted away, calling his relationship with the Board of Trustees an “unsustainable situation.” He pointedly wrote, “What is perhaps most troubling is the actions of some to abuse their access to privileged and confidential information to misrepresent facts, manipulate situations and selectively use and leak that information to promote personal agendas.”
As outsiders, it didn’t take Guskiewicz and Batt long to recognize the size of the challenge. Batt launched Spartan Ventures to raise NIL funds for athletes, and almost immediately, its for-profit arm, Spartan Media Ventures, raised questions about third-party stakes in a public university. You can debate whether it’s good or bad, but the debate itself is important. Except that it devolved into rabid public arguments about transparency and oversight.
To quell the airing of grievances and leaking of sensitive information, the Board majority approved “revised ethics and conduct standards” and required each Trustee to sign it. Failure to do so could result in public censure or removal. Three trustees — Rema Vassar (D-Detroit), Dennis Denno (D-East Lansing) and Mike Balow (R-Plymouth) — refused, citing freedom of speech and commitment to their duties, before it was approved.
MSU is not the only university to struggle with alignment, as UM has had its own notable disagreements between the president and Board of Regents. Michigan is looking for its fourth president in four years, after Santa Ono departed and president-elect Kent Syverud stepped down because of a cancer diagnosis.
MSU is seeking its seventh president in eight years (counting interims), going back to the 2018 resignation of Lou Anna Simon in the midst of the Larry Nassar sexual assault scandal. That also cost AD Mark Hollis his job, and Hollis said Monday he’d be interested if MSU wanted him back. Finding another AD that fits could be problematic without a permanent president. And finding a permanent president could be problematic considering the power of the Board, which ousted president Samuel Stanley Jr. in 2022.
Like many schools, MSU can be an insular place, a bit of an echo chamber, reluctant to change. That’s why it was encouraging when Guskiewicz and Batt barreled in with provocative ideas and fundraising plans, including the securing of a $401-million commitment from donors Greg and Dawn Williams.
That’s why it’s so discouraging the regime collapsed, necessitating two more delicate hirings. It’s not easy to find innovative leaders who also grasp MSU’s history and unique challenges. The Spartans’ fundraising has been haphazard, going back to Mel Tucker’s $95-million contract, partly funded by billionaire alum Mat Ishbia. In that case, differing opinions created dissent, Tucker turned out to be a disaster, and AD Alan Haller ultimately lost his job. It was the type of mistake the new regime was attempting to avoid.
Latest upheavel embarrassing
Izzo called the latest upheaval embarrassing, and it is, especially because much of it is self-inflicted. It doesn’t have to be ingrained in the school, even if seems that way. Not long ago, MSU’s athletic leaders — Hollis, Izzo, Mark Dantonio — were as successful and powerful as any trio in the country. Because of the monstrous scope of the Nassar tragedy, more people at MSU were impacted than should have been. Leaders were forced out or scattered, except for one.
Izzo, who had nothing to do with Nassar, stood up for his school, loudly and passionately. Every time you wonder if it will break him, he fires back. Just like every time you wonder if he’ll keep the Spartans successful, he wins a Big Ten title.
“Still standing, still winning,” Izzo said Monday at the announcement of a $40-million sponsorship with MSUFCU (credit union) for jersey patches. “You know, I love my football coach and my hockey coach, those were the first two guys to call me last week. Their words were ‘Let’s go.’ … Because we’ve been divided, and I don’t think it’s a 50-50 divide or 60-40 or 80-20, you know? It’s a couple people look at things one way, and a lot of people look at it the other way. But it’ll be a cold day in hell before I don’t think this is still one of the great universities in the country. Why don’t we get out of our own way? I don’t know.”
Izzo is always up for a good fight — with the NCAA, the media, the officials, the NIL mayhem, his rival. The truth is, he doesn’t always pick the right battles, and that’s where the East Lansing echo chamber hampers him. Much of the fighting is Spartan-on-Spartan, whether among trustees or donors or whoever’s picking the next football coach.
“I think 600,000 alums better start rallying together,” Izzo said. “I’m gonna ask the alums to stand up because what happened with our president is ridiculous. And he said it, we know the reasons, and I’m ashamed. I’m disgusted, hurt. But we’ll see what the Spartan Nation thinks. … I think Michigan State people have to take ownership of their university. We gotta speak up. We gotta band together.”
Izzo was speaking to a broad base, but pointedly to the Trustees and other factions that get accused of putting their own interests above the school. It’s about how money is spent, how NIL funds are distributed and which programs pay the price, such as the school’s disbanded swimming program. To be fair, the trustees supported many of Guskiewicz’s moves, including swift approval of the Batt and Fitzgerald hirings, as well as the ouster of football coach Jonathan Smith.
Guskiewicz gave Batt a mandate to modernize and monetize MSU athletics, and that’s his strength. He pushed hard and so did the president, and in some ways the pushback was predictable.
“I can’t stand what’s going on,” said Izzo, whose voice is strong and respected, but it’s only one voice. Fans and alums may want to fight back but they don’t know where to swing and what to hit. The Board of Trustees is the obvious target, and often the right target, but there’s blame to go around. Michigan State is a large, renowned institution with a rich history. Too often, it doesn’t act like it.
Bob.wojnowski@detroitnews.com
@bobwojnowski
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Wojo: Izzo furious as Michigan State blows another chance to get it right
Reporting by Bob Wojnowski, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Bob Wojnowski, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
