Tom Izzo inadvertently named this series. When I decided to survey several top college basketball coaches this summer about the state of their sport in a time of great disruption, Michigan State‘s 71-year-old Hall of Famer was the first guy on my wish list. Because he has big opinions, no filter and the wisdom of three decades leading a top program.
We chatted for more than an hour, even though I’d only asked for five minutes of his time, while Izzo watched Mateen Cleaves Jr. play at Peach Jam last month. (Yes, the son of Izzo’s national championship point guard by the same name.)
“Coaches used to do stuff for the betterment of the game, and now we’ve become like players: everybody’s selfish,” Izzo told me. “We don’t look at what’s best for the game; we look at what’s best for us. The people I was brought up with, it was all about what was best for the game. We were guardians of the game.”
That was in his answer to Part 1 of this series: What worries you most about the sport?
For Part 2, I asked Izzo and his fellow head coaches from the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and mid-majors a less-depressing question: What are you most hopeful about in the sport?
But now it’s time for solutions. The third installment of Guarding the Game asks: What’s one common-sense change that would most improve the sport?
The answers are mostly variations on a theme, but one specific recommendation was repeated by five coaches: a one-time transfer rule with limited exceptions. Here, in their own words, is how today’s guardians of the game would steady their destabilized sport:
