Tom Izzo Quotes

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Tom Izzo

Profession : Coach

Birth : January 30, 1955

My dad and uncles probably taught me more than any institutions.

Tom Izzo

I could do just about anything - put zippers in coats or put heels on shoes.

Tom Izzo

It's hard to do wrong when the chief of police lives on the right side of you and the principal on the left side.

Tom Izzo

You've got to deal with sometimes what life throws at you, and life has thrown some things at me and life has thrown some incredible things at me.

Tom Izzo

There are not a lot of things in life that have a definitive ending. Playing careers are one of them.

Tom Izzo

I try to tell my guys, don't wish your way out of high school. You never get to go back to high school. Don't wish your way out of college; you never go back to be a college student. You may go back to get more education, but you don't get the four years of being a college student.

Tom Izzo

The most important part of my job is, as they say, taking a boy and making him a man. But my other most rewarding part is taking a guy that maybe isn't in an element that is going to make him successful to life to help bring him into it.

Tom Izzo

I think kids are making a lot of bad decisions because we're teaching them that the minute something goes tough, to get the hell out of dodge.

Tom Izzo

You have to learn how to compete.

Tom Izzo

My dad didn't give me a lot of freedom.

Tom Izzo

The one thing that my parents have told me and I try to tell my kids it doesn't matter how much fame, money, and anything else you have, friends, marriage, it doesn't, none of it matters compared to your health, cause without it nothing matters.

Tom Izzo

I just think some things are bigger than basketball.

Tom Izzo

Redshirt years, even though they are painful to go through, when you do go through them, if you are a driven guy, you can get a lot out of them.

Tom Izzo

Listen, I learn lessons, too.

Tom Izzo

I feel like I spend a lot of time in the inner cities and around different people, and always felt like I had a good relationship. But when I saw what I saw with George Floyd, it sickened me. I said it and it did. It was real and it was disappointing, but it was disgusting.

Tom Izzo

The one thing I'm learning about these phones and this Twitter generation, I don't think anybody cares about what happened in years past.

Tom Izzo

You can't like your rival, but you can respect your rival.

Tom Izzo

I've never run from anything in my life, nothing.

Tom Izzo

You tell your players all the time: 'Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.' I think I'm in a position where I can help be part of the solution that's even way bigger than basketball.

Tom Izzo

I have my own goals and dreams and I have my own aspirations of what I want to do.

Tom Izzo