So, I have lots of thoughts around the horrible things going on in my favorite sport.  I need a night when I can gather my thoughts ranging from all the players who are taking money from agents, to LeBron James criticizing the NCAA for being corrupt, to a wiretap saying that Sean Miller talking about paying $100K to get a player to come to Arizona.

But I have to give a quick comment about the recent news conference where Tom Izzo said that he and his team will only be answering basketball questions from here on in.  He doesn’t like while his #2 Spartans have just won the Big 10 and have a legitimate chance at winning the National Championship, he is getting questioned about the multiple sexual assault allegations that have happened to players in his program and why his star player from this year was one of the 7 active players getting improper benefits according to the report by Yahoo.

I can understand he doesn’t like it.  But Tom Izzo is paid $3.65 million a year to be the face of the Michigan State basketball program.  And that means going to press conferences and answering questions from the media.  It is not hard to guess what questions the media are going to ask – he has obviously anticipated them if he says he is not going to answer anything other than basketball.  He might not like it – but his job doesn’t end when the clock hits zero on the court.  With that kind of money, he can prep a little bit and have a planned answer for all the questions he doesn’t want to answer.

Or how about this.  He says he owes it to his team to get the focus back on basketball.   But lets say his star Miles Bridges gets to the NBA.  Then, he is going to have to answer the media’s questions all the time, whether they are about things on or off the court.  How about instead of hiding his star player from the press, why not earn a little bit of his outrageous salary and coach that player on how to prepare for a press conference when they are going to ask tough questions.

I don’t think Miles Bridges is a bad person for having lunch with an agent – he is likely going to need an agent when he goes pro.  But what I do have a problem with is that Tom Izzo feels that he should be allowed to simply run practices, win basketball games and then answer questions about how proud he is of his team when they win.  He is paid a lot of money to represent Michigan State as the leader of that program.  And when there are lots of questions about what is happening outside the court, as much as he might not like it, it is his job to answer them.  He can answer them with a very lawyer like answer of – I can’t answer that because of student privacy laws, or I wasn’t there – I can’t watch my players and their parents 24/7.  But for $3.65 million, he should at least spend some time and prepare a canned response instead of getting angry that he is getting asked questions he doesn’t want to answer.