EAST LANSING — There can’t be many people in this world who have an office view better for their psyche than Tom Izzo does.
Some folks might prefer an ocean view or cityscape. Izzo’s soul is fed by having Munn Field outside his window.
Advertisement
It’s where, just this week, as the sun went down and he realized he was working in the dark, he turned to see a group of Michigan State students playing soccer under the lights. “This ain’t so bad,” he thought. It’s where he fondly remembers the energy of the football tailgates 30 years ago and continues to lobby for a return to those days.
Across the way, he can see the dorm where he used to stand in the cafeteria line begging students to come to basketball games. And that big green field is also where every year now students camp out so they can go to those basketball games as part of the Izzone student section.
They’ll do so again this Friday night — after Michigan State Madness at Breslin Center — with Izzo joining them once again in his tent for the entire night.
“I’m a little worried that it’s going to be too nice of weather,” Izzo said.
Advertisement
At age 70, Izzo looks and sounds invigorated. If you’ve known him for a while, that jumps out at you. He’ll tell you it’s been a number of years since he’s felt as good as he has for the last year or so.
RELATED: Michigan State basketball lands four-star recruit Julius Avent in class of 2026
Michigan State’s coach Tom Izzo looks on during the first day of basketball practice on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025, at the Breslin Center in East Lansing.
It’s not the changing world of college athletics that’s responsible for his vitality. That’s for certain. It’s having a team he likes, being at peace with how he’s running his program, while still finding thrill in the grind. It’s prioritizing his health a little more (though not so much to prioritize sleep). It’s cutting back on some outside commitments (college basketball committees and such). And becoming a grandfather for the second time barely a week ago.
Advertisement
And it’s weekends like this, during a whirlwind of recruiting visits and trips, when he sets up camp with the student body and spends the night on Munn Field.
“It’s why I never took a pro job,” Izzo said Tuesday, a month before beginning his 31st season as MSU’s men’s basketball coach. “What invigorates me is college football on campus and the ability to have an impact on students. I was one. I know what it’s like. I’m starting to appreciate that more as these kids are now alumni. They come back and they bring their kids back, and you realize, with the things they say, that it made a difference. They thought it was cool at the time, maybe they thought it was fun. And how many colleges do this?
“That’s the high. That’s what keeps me going, because college sports is a mess.”
In nearly 30 years of campouts — which began with about 100 tents and, last year, set a record at around 1,400, Izzo said — a generation in his own family has passed. He used to bring his daughter, Raquel. Then she started bringing her friends. Then they got old enough to have their own tent. The same thing happened with his son, Steven. Someday, if Izzo keeps at it a bit longer, maybe his two granddaughters, Isabelle, 2, and Sophie, 9 days, will join him. This year, it’ll again be his longtime friend and former MSU team manager from the 1980s, George Johnson, who stays with him.
Advertisement
MSU’s players will be there at the beginning, too. That they lingered as long as they did last year, Izzo said, was probably an early sign of the connectedness that team had, which played a role in their run to a Big Ten championship and Elite Eight.
MSU’s Jesse McCulloch crowd surfs during the Izzone campout on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024, at Munn Field in East Lansing.
There are many reasons the Munn Field campout has become the festive tradition it has. But it all began in the mid-1990s, Izzo said, with an MSU student standing in line overnight for basketball tickets who had to pee — and did so on a tree. Somehow this moment of public urination became a big deal, reaching the desk of former MSU President Peter McPherson. Izzo stepped in and said he’d organize the process and move them to Munn Field, where the campout was born.
These were the years when Izzo was battling to get the program going. But there were things he loved about those days. For example, Michigan State Madness was Midnight Madness, when the first practice couldn’t officially begin until midnight on Oct. 15. Izzo still prefers the midnight start and said he might do it again some year. This Friday, doors at Breslin Center open at 8 p.m. (admission is free) and the team has been practicing for more than a week (and really all summer).
Advertisement
He also misses the old Munn Field MSU football tailgates, which have been rejuvenated to some degree this year with a beer garden and limited parking. Izzo brought up Munn Field tailgating in one of his first conversations with Kevin Guskiewicz after Guskiewicz began as MSU’s president.
“In Week 2 that I was here,” Guskiewicz said recently at a luncheon.
Izzo wants the cars back on Munn Field. That’s how he says it.
“Yeah, because I remember taking recruits and going through (Munn Field), walking to the game, the place was nuts (in the 1990s),” he said. “It’s taken a giant step. It’s got like four steps to go. But I just love that. I just love it. I don’t know, that’s my adrenaline.”
Tom Izzo speaks to the crowd during the Izzone campout on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024, at Munn Field in East Lansing.
Izzo still gets a lot of his endorphins from MSU’s campus and from being around his players. On Sunday, during the Ryder Cup, he could hear the team managers yelling and cheering down the hall from his office as the U.S. team began its comeback. He went to join them. Then a couple other coaches followed. Then MSU’s players began arriving for a 5 p.m. meeting, just as things were heating up on the course. They delayed the team meeting so they could finish watching together — under the condition, Izzo said, that they pay attention to how much it meant to those golfers to be part of that team.
Advertisement
“I said, ‘This is why you’re the luckiest human beings on the planet, because (basketball) is a team sport,’ ” Izzo told them. “ ‘What we did last year … these guys (in the Ryder Cup) are dying to have teammates. They never have them all year. And now you’ve got guys getting interviewed and saying this is the most important event of the year. They’re playing for their country, playing for their teammates.’ It was so cool.”
Izzo still dreams of the day when MSU football, basketball and hockey are all on top together. He talks of the peak Mark Dantonio years as something he’d love to experience again.
“I just keep thinking that somehow it’s going to get back to how it used to be,” Izzo said. “Dantonio and I talk all the time, with Adam (Nightingale) getting it rolling here (in hockey) a little bit, and if football can get rolling. There was no better time than (from) 2008, ’09 (on). I mean, it was rolling. It was fun, and we supported each other. God, it was great. And when that happens, there’s nothing better. I guess the big question is, will that ever happen again? Not because of football and basketball, just the landscape of everything?”
“I still love my job. I don’t respect my profession right now,” Izzo continued. “When people die, what do you want at the end? I just want respect, right? That’s what people say. Well, the profession I’ve given 40 years to, I don’t respect what we’ve done. I don’t respect what the NCAA has done.”
Advertisement
Izzo’s frustration with the bigger picture of college sports is always near the tip of his tongue. Behind him, however …. Munn Field, students playing games, and the campus that’s his identity.
“I’ve got things I want to accomplish,” Izzo said. “I do feel better. I do have more energy. … The calls and letters I get (from other old-timers): ‘You gotta hang in there.’
“I just keep saying to myself, ‘Can we do it a different way?’ And that ain’t the easy way. And yet, that’s been my whole life.”
If any MSU students want to have this candid conversation with him, they can find him Friday night in his tent.
Advertisement
RELATED: Couch: Izzo’s Hall of Fame career began with uncertain early years
Students hang outside their tents during the Izzone campout on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024, at Munn Field in East Lansing.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and BlueSky @GrahamCouch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU basketball: Tom Izzo, 70, looks and sounds invigorated
