Izzo has led the Spartans to eight Final Fours in the NCAA Tournament, which include the NCAA National Championship in 2000 and a Runner-Up finish in 2009. His teams have won ten Big Ten regular season titles, and six Big Ten tournament championships in his 26 years at Michigan State. Izzo has the most wins in school history and his teams have earned invitations to 24 consecutive NCAA tournaments without a single losing season as a head coach. In addition, MSU set the Big Ten record for the longest home court winning streak between 1998 and 2002. Several of these accomplishments led former ESPN analyst Andy Katz to deem Michigan State the top college basketball program for the decade of 1998 to 2007.

Izzo is currently the longest-tenured coach in the Big Ten Conference, and his teams are often recognized for their rebounding prowess and defensive tenacity. He has won four national coach of the year awards and maintains a considerable coaching tree—several of his former assistants are currently head coaches at other Division I schools. Izzo has won 10 regular-season conference titles, the third most in conference history. He has also won the most Big Ten tournament titles (six) in conference history.
On March 6, 2022, Izzo surpassed Bob Knight for the most wins by a men's basketball coach at a Big Ten school with 663.

Playing career
Izzo, who is of Italian and Finnish descent, was born and raised in Iron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, near the border of Wisconsin. In his hometown he met best friend and former NFL head coach Steve Mariucci. Both he and his friend attended Iron Mountain High where they were teammates on the football, basketball and track teams. At Northern Michigan University in Marquette, where they were roommates, Izzo played guard for the men's basketball team from 1973 to 1977. In his senior season, he set a school record for minutes played and was named a Division II All-American.

Early coaching career
After graduating from Northern Michigan, Izzo was head coach at Ishpeming High School for one season. He then took an assistant coaching job at Northern Michigan University from 1979 to 1983. Izzo was then named a part-time assistant at Michigan State in September 1983. After a short two-month stay in 1986 as an assistant coach at University of Tulsa, Izzo returned to Michigan State when assistant Mike Deane left to become head coach at Siena College. Prior to the 1990–91 season, then coach Jud Heathcote elevated Izzo to associate head coach. After Heathcote's retirement following the 1994–95 season and upon both Heathcote and the Michigan State Athletic Director's recommendation, Izzo was named the new head coach of men's basketball for MSU.

Head coach at Michigan State
Izzo and John Calipari of Kentucky, the two highest paid college coaches in 2012[9]
Hired as head coach at Michigan State in 1995, Izzo is currently the longest-tenured basketball coach in the Big Ten Conference. He became the coach with the most wins in school history after winning his 341st game on November 29, 2009, to surpass Heathcote.[10] In his first two seasons as head coach, Izzo went 9–9 finishing 6th and 7th in the conference and failed to make the NCAA Tournament. In 1998, MSU's record in conference improved to 13–3 and Izzo won the first of his ten regular-season Big Ten championships. 1998 also saw Michigan State begin a streak of 24 straight NCAA Tournament appearances, which is the 2nd longest current streak among Division I teams. Izzo has a record of 53–23 in the NCAA Tournament. In 1999, Izzo won his first of six Big Ten tournament titles, and went to his first Final Four, the first of three straight Final Four appearances, joining Krzyzewski and Ben Howland as the only three coaches who have made three consecutive Final Fours since the NCAA Tournament bracket expanded to 64 teams in 1985. In the instate rivalry with Michigan, Izzo's official record against the Wolverines is 31–14, although Michigan vacated five of their wins in the series at the start of his head coaching career.

In 2000, Izzo led MSU to its second NCAA national championship with an 89–76 win over Florida. Eighty-two percent of his players who completed their eligibility left MSU with a degree. Over the years, Izzo has been pursued by the Atlanta Hawks, Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, and New Jersey Nets for head coaching jobs. After a brief flirtation with Cleveland, on June 15, 2010, Izzo reported to the Michigan State University's Board of Trustees that he would remain head coach of Michigan State, in which he stated he was "a Spartan for life."

Izzo fell short of obtaining his second national championship in 2009 with a loss to North Carolina 89–72. His streak of three straight Final Four appearances from 1999 to 2001 is the third-longest of all time, and his six Final Four appearances in the years 1999–2010 were matched by no other team in college basketball.
In 2013, Izzo was voted as the fifth angriest coach in college basketball by USA Today Sports, an honor that he cherishes.

On November 26, 2015, Izzo won his 500th career game, all with Michigan State, with a win over Boston College in the Wooden Legacy.[16] On January 28, 2016, Izzo won his 513th career game moving him into second place past Gene Keady all time for wins by a coach in the Big Ten. He trails only Bob Knight.

On March 18, 2016, MSU suffered what was, at the time, perhaps the single greatest upset in NCAA Tournament history when No. 15 seeded Middle Tennessee defeated the No. 2 seeded Spartans 90–81.[18] It was believed that MSU was the equivalent of a No. 1 seed and Vegas odds had them pegged the favorite to win the title. Middle Tennessee led from start to finish and held off repeated Michigan State threats to take the lead. Despite that, Izzo stated that the team "resurrected me.”
On October 13, 2016, Izzo won the Dean Smith Award which is awarded to “an individual in college basketball who embodies the spirit and values of the late North Carolina coaching great".

Izzo led the 2018–19 Spartans to a 32–7 overall record, his fifth 30-win season, and 19th season with 20+ wins, nearly triple his predecessor's seven 20-win campaigns; the team reached the Final Four for the eighth time under Izzo. On October 21, 2019, at the outset of Izzo's 25th season leading the Spartans, Michigan State was named the preseason No. 1 team in The Associated Press Top 25 men's college basketball preseason poll for the first time in program history, dating to the beginning of the AP poll in 1948.

On February 26, 2022, with a win over the No. 4-ranked Purdue Boilermakers, Izzo tied former Indiana coach Bob Knight for the most wins all-time at a Big Ten school.
On August 11, 2022 Izzo signed a 5 year contract extension, worth 6.2 million dollars annually, with the Spartans. The contract solidifies that Izzo with be a "Spartan for life”.

Hall of Fame
On April 4, 2016, Izzo was named to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Izzo chose former Maryland head coach Gary Williams to introduce him at the Hall of Fame ceremony. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame on September 9, 2016.
In the Fall of 2016, Izzo was named to the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan (BCAM) Hall of Fame.

Coaching Philosophy
We'll play anybody, anyplace, anytime. It doesn't matter, morning, noon or night, and it doesn't matter who it is.
Izzo's teams are known for strong guard play, toughness and rebounding. Izzo is famed for his "war" rebounding drill, in which the players wear football helmets and shoulder pads. His motto is "Players Play – Tough Players Win".[29] His other coaching philosophies include, "he doesn't determine playing time, players do" and "A player-coached team is better than a coach-coached team." Izzo is also known for scheduling extremely tough non-conference schedules as preparation for the NCAA tournament in March.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mariucci was born and raised in Iron Mountain, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula, where he met best friend and current Michigan State University basketball head coach Tom Izzo. Both attended Iron Mountain High where they were teammates on the football, basketball, and track teams.
At Northern Michigan University (NMU) in Marquette, where they were roommates, Mariucci was a three-time All-America (Division II) quarterback. As a sophomore in 1975, he led the Wildcats to three postseason wins and the national championship. Mariucci signed with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League in May 1978,[1] but was released a month later on June 9.[2]

He began his coaching career at his alma mater (1978–79), and moved to Cal State Fullerton (1980–82) and Louisville (1983–84). Mariucci's first pro position was as a receivers coach for the USFL's Orlando Renegades in 1985. Later that fall, he had a brief stint in the NFL with the Los Angeles Rams as quality control coach.
Mariucci returned to college football and joined the USC staff in 1986 and coached wide receiver Ken Henry to a season where he had 807 yards with 7 TDs; WR Randy Tanner also had 408 yards with 3 TDs.[3]
He then moved to the coaching staff at the University of California, Berkeley (Cal) in 1987. that first season, WR Brian Bedford had 515 yards with 4 TDs and WR Mike Ford had 479 yards with 3 TDs.[4] In 1989, WR Brian Treggs had 746 yards with 4 TDs.[5]
In 1990 and 1991, he was the Golden Bears' offensive coordinator. Quarterback Mike Pawlawski threw for 2,069 yards with 17 TDs and RBs Anthony Wallace and Russell White combined to run for 2,002 yards with 16 TDs.[6] In 1991, Pawlawski threw for 2,517 yards with 21 TDs and White ran for 1,177 yards with 14 TDs; WR Sean Dawkins had 723 yards with 11 TDs.[7]
Mariucci then moved to the NFL, and became the quarterback coach for the Green Bay Packers in 1992 under new head coach Mike Holmgren. After four years with the Packers, he returned to Cal as head coach in 1996 and went 6–6, ending with an Aloha Bowl loss to Navy.

Following his season with the Golden Bears, Mariucci was considered a leading candidate for several NFL head coaching positions, and was hired by the San Francisco 49ers to succeed George Seifert.
In his first season in 1997, the 49ers went 13–3 during the regular season, earning home-field advantage in the playoffs in the National Football Conference (NFC). After defeating the Minnesota Vikings in the divisional round, San Francisco hosted the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game, but lost 23–10 in a muddy, rainy contest at Candlestick Park. The defeat was the 49ers' fourth NFC title loss of the 1990s, following losses to the New York Giants in 1990 and the Dallas Cowboys in 1992 and 1993, and it was their third playoff loss to the Packers in as many seasons. In 1998, the 49ers posted a 12–4 record and returned to the playoffs as a wild-card team, finally beating Green Bay in the Wild Card game but lost 20–18 in the divisional round to the eventual NFC champion Atlanta Falcons. The Wild Card Game saw Terrell Owens drop many passes but redeem himself with The Catch II, scoring the winning touchdown. Two losing seasons followed, but in 2001, the 49ers returned to the playoffs after a 12–4 season, once again to be eliminated by the Packers.

Mariucci's final season in San Francisco was 2002. The 49ers won the NFC West with a 10–6 record and beat the New York Giants in a controversial wild-card game, posting the third-biggest comeback playoff victory in NFL history (second biggest at the time). However, they were crushed 31–6 by the eventual Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the divisional round. On January 15, 2003, the 49ers fired Mariucci, reportedly after the coach lost a power struggle with general manager Terry Donahue.[8] As San Francisco's coach, he compiled a 60–43 (.583) record, while his teams earned playoff berths four times. His firing caused an uproar among 49er fans, and the franchise struggled heavily, having no winning seasons for 10 years following Mariucci's exit.
Mariucci was named the Detroit Lions' 22nd head coach on February 4, 2003, and was fired on November 28, 2005. In his abbreviated three seasons in Detroit, he compiled a disappointing 15–28 (.349) record. Mariucci's troubles in Detroit were partially attributed by many fans and experts to poor personnel evaluations by then Lions' general manager Matt Millen, who had signed Mariucci to a five-year $25 million guaranteed contract, the NFL's highest coaching contract at the time. During his time in Detroit, the Lions finished no higher than third in their division and never contended for a playoff berth. The decision to fire Mariucci came after a 27–7 blowout loss on national television on Thanksgiving Day to the Atlanta Falcons.

During the Brett Favre–Green Bay Packers dispute throughout the 2008 off-season, Favre criticized the Packers for not interviewing Mariucci for their head coaching job in 2006. Mariucci, who previously worked with Favre, was figured to be a great candidate for the West Coast Offense style played in Green Bay.
Mariucci is one of thirteen head coaches since the AFL–NFL merger in 1970 to lead his team to a division title in his first season. Mariucci established an NFL mark for consecutive wins by a rookie head coach with an 11-game winning streak, which has since been trumped by Jim Caldwell's 14–0 start with the Indianapolis Colts during the 2009 season.

Throughout his career, Mariucci coached a high number of players (9) inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Hall of Fame inductees coached by Mariucci as either their position or head coach include: Tony Gonzalez, Brett Favre, Steve Young, Jerry Rice, Kevin Greene, Rod Woodson, Chris Doleman, Charles Haley, and Terrell Owens.

Mariucci now resides in Monte Sereno, California. He has four children: Stephen, Tyler, Adam, and Brielle. His eldest son Tyler is an assistant athletic director at San Diego State University. Adam works in Real Estate in New York City and his son Stephen is country music artist, Stephen Ray.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  John Bartlow Martin, a freelance writer who had spent long weeks in northern Wisconsin and Michigan, was struck with the idea of a book on Michigan's Upper Peninsula when he was there on his wedding trip. Returning each summer to the area, and considered a fellow Yooper by many he befriended, Martin discovered the region's diverse history, full of colorful and interesting personalities and events. The territory has been wilderness, a haunt of the    Chippewas and the Hurons, copper country, iron country, lumber country, and lastly, a vacation land. Filled with stories of adventure and daring, Call It North Country recounts the lives of miners, hunters, trappers, and lumberjacks — the hardy breeds who first populated the harsh land of the Upper Peninsula.
Here is his story:
  Mr. Martin, whose peripatetic career took him to coalfields in Illinois, racially divided Southern communities, the treacherous political byways of the Caribbean and aboard presidential campaign planes, produced 15 books and scores of prize-winning articles for America's leading magazines.
  Equally at home in the worlds of politics and diplomacy, he served as Ambassador to the Dominican Republic from 1962 to 1964 under President John F. Kennedy. Mr. Martin held that post during great instability and political change on the island nation.
  Mr. Martin also lent his political skills and talent for choosing words to the presidential campaigns of Adlai E. Stevenson, Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey. He was, in the words of one book reviewer, ''a devoutly liberal Democrat, unabashed and unregenerate.''
A modest, bespectacled man whose diffidence belied great intensity, Mr. Martin established himself as one of America's premier seekers of fact in a writing career that spanned almost 50 years. Praised as a Reporter
  ''The best living reporter'' and ''the ablest crime reporter in America'' were among the superlatives editors and critics applied to Mr. Martin.
  Yet Mr. Martin's sympathies echoed through many of his works, which focused on people cast off or forgotten by society: criminals, prisoners, the troubled, the hurt and the powerless.
Asked once to define the common denominator of his writing, Mr. Martin said: ''I've always been interested in the individual human being and what happens to him in a society that really doesn't work as well as it should. Sounds kinds of pretentious, but I think it's so.''
John Bartlow Martin was born Aug. 4, 1915, in Hamilton, Ohio, the son of a carpenter who never finished high school. The family moved to Indianapolis where Mr. Martin lived what he said was an unhappy childhood, marked by the death of a brother and parental disputes. 'Dark' Childhood Memories
  ''Many seem to regard the years of their youth as the easiest years of their lives,'' Mr. Martin wrote in ''It Seemed Like Only Yesterday,'' his recently published memoirs. ''Most of my childhood memories are dark.''
  Mr. Martin became interested in modern literature in high school, and after graduating at the age of 16 he entered DePauw University where he was expelled before the end of the year for drinking in his room.
  He began his journalistic career as a $9-a-week ''gofer'' in the Indianapolis bureau of the Associated Press. He later went on to graduate from DePauw where he edited the school paper and wrote for the Indianapolis Times.
  With a check for $175, the profits from his first freelance magazine article, Mr. Martin moved to Chicago with one suitcase, a portable typewriter and a desire to write.
  After several years divided between writing for pulp detective magazines, more serious journals and service in the army, Mr. Martin established his national reputation with an article for Harper's magazine about an explosion at a mine in Centralia, Ill., that killed about 100 people. The article, which at 18,500 words was the longest in the magazine's history, helped lead to a new Federal mine safety code. 'A Million Words a Year'
  Several articles and books followed and Mr. Martin's name became a familiar site on the cover of the great mass-circulation magazines of the 1940's and 1950's: The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look, Collier's, and The Atlantic.
  ''When I hit my stride,'' Mr. Martin recalled in his memoirs, ''I was writing a million words a year,'' producing long drafts at his home outside Chicago or in a cabin in the woods of upper Michigan.
  Mr. Martin turned to politics in 1952 when he was hired by Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois as one of his ''Elks,'' a team of writers and advisers named because of their offices at the Elks Club in Springfield, Ill.
  Mr. Martin specialized in advance reportage and the short, stump speech. ''No one then, and I think none since, could make a point more succinctly, support it more sharply with evidence and then, of all things, stop,'' wrote John Kenneth Galbraith of Mr. Martin's skill.
After working for the Stevenson Presidential campaign in 1956 and the Kennedy Presidential campaign in 1960, Mr. Martin was appointed Ambassador to the Dominican Republic by President Kennedy.
  He arrived after the assassination of the dictator, Rafael Trujillo Molina, and witnessed that nation's first democratic elections. So close was he to the new writer-president, Juan Bosch, that when Mr. Bosch was ousted in a military coup Dominicans joked that Mr. Martin had been overthrown, too.
  Shortly after President Kennedy was assassinated, Mr. Martin resigned. He returned to the Dominican Republic in 1965 as a special envoy when President Lyndon Johnson dispatched United States troops there.
  In addition to his speechwriting and books from his magazine work, Mr. Martin was also the author of the 800-page biography, ''The Life of Adlai E. Stevenson,'' a book about American policy in the Caribbean and a political novel.
  Mr. Martin is survived by his wife, Frances; a daughter, Cynthia Coleman of Philadelphia, and two sons, Daniel B. and John Frederick, both of Washington.

  Ever wonder how scary it would be to have an 80 MPH Frisbee® flying straight at your face from only 15 yards away? Think you could catch it with just one hand? Well that’s what it’s like to play Guts Frisbee, the original extreme sport for flying discs. This high-speed game of throw and catch has now been played for an amazing 50 consecutive years at the International Frisbee Tournament, being held this June 30th and July 1st in Hancock, Michigan.
   The International Frisbee Tournament is the oldest and most prestigious flying disc tournament in the world, dating back to 1958, when the Healy brothers at a family picnic in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula took a Pluto Platter—the direct ancestor of the modern Frisbee—and invented a simple game of throw and catch between two teams standing about 15 yards apart. They called it “Guts Frisbee” because to score a point, you had to throw the disc so hard that the opposing team couldn’t catch it cleanly in one hand—then have the guts to try catching the screaming-fast disc when it was thrown back at you. The Wham-O® company—fresh off their success with the Hula Hoop®—acquired the rights to the Pluto Platter around the same time, renamed it the Frisbee, and launched a major fad that swept the nation.    
    This IFT promises to be the biggest, most historic, most competitive Guts Frisbee tournament ever, drawing players old and new from all over the United States and Canada. And for the first time ever, two strong teams from Japan—including “Katon”, the World Flying Disc Federation World Champions—will be joining the intense competition. The sport’s official sanctioning body for North America, the United States Guts Players Association (USGPA), is also planning to induct some of history’s most outstanding players into the Guts Frisbee Hall of Fame at their Saturday night players’ banquet. New inductees George “Thor” Anderson, Bill Begoske, Dave Bradshaw, Tom Field, Bill Hodges, and Gerard Newman will join the ranks of such flying disc legends as Fred Morrison, the inventor of the original Pluto Platter, the Healy brothers who started the IFT and the sport of Guts Frisbee, and “Steady Ed” Headrick, the visionary who won two IFTs and is credited with inventing the standard “pole hole” basket used on modern disc golf courses.
   As the years went by and millions of Frisbees were sold, that humble family picnic grew and grew, until tens of thousands of people were attending what had become known as the International Frisbee Tournament, or IFT. By the early 1970’s, the game of Guts had spread across the country, then around the world, with coverage on radio, television, major newspapers, and even TIME magazine. (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877893,00.html)

The Original X-treme Sport
   As Guts Frisbee evolved during the 1960’s, players started throwing faster and faster, until it wasn’t unusual to see presumably unbreakable Frisbees traveling at 60 or 70 mph shatter on impact with some unlucky defender’s hand. Catching the speedy disc—either straight on or after a teammate deflected it into the air—now really took Guts! With over 60 teams at a tournament, matches became knock-down, drag-out affairs, as everyone tried to battle their way into the Finals and a chance to win the IFT’s coveted Julius T. Nachazel trophy. One player even required 15 stitches to close a gaping wound across the palm of his hand after repeated pummeling by one of the world’s fastest throwers. With radical curving shots, deflected Frisbees bobbled frantically among teammates,and spectacular diving catches, Guts Frisbee had become an extreme sport demanding lightning-quick reflexes, physical endurance, and steely concentration.

Guts Frisbee Rebirth
Since its heyday in the 1970s, when even ABC’s Wide World of Sports was televising Guts action and tournaments were springing up everywhere from Toronto to Chicago and Los Angeles, the sport has gradually declined in popularity in America. Guts had been introduced in Asia by Wham-O in the 1970s, and by the 1990s it had become even more popular in Japan and Taiwan than in the U.S. Recent years, however, have seen pockets of strong, young American players who are taking the sport to an even higher competitive level. Plenty of older players have also stirred from retirement to revel in the game’s rebirth and take part in this historic 50th IFT. Organizers anticipate the largest turnout in decades, with both players and spectators from the past fifty years converging on the Driving Park fields in west Hancock for two days of the most thrill-packed Frisbee action imaginable.

Paul Kangas
Houghton, MI
 Miami-based Anchor and Financial Commentator
for public television's Nightly Business Report and television's leading provider of daily stock market information.

• Played football at Notre Dame for four years.
• Inducted into the Michigan Football Hall of Fame, National Football Hall of Fame, and Upper Peninsula Hall of Fame.
• Scored 21 touchdowns on offense.
• Not a single pass was completed in his protective zone during four years on defense.
• Gipp was Notre Dame’s first member of the All-American team.
• Died from pneumonia and strep infection.
• The George Gipp Award is awarded to an outstanding senior athlete. It was started at his high school, Calumet High School, in 1934.
 

   When he first came back to Michigan, he wasn't sure what field he would follow, until one day he had a luncheon with wildlife artist Les Kouba. Kouba suggested that LeBlanc get into the wildlife field. Lee LeBlanc had received many awards, among them the Golden Mallard Award from the state of Arkansas, Artist of the Year in 1975 in Tennessee, Artist of the Year in 1978 in Michigan, and Wild Life Artist of the Year by the Arkansas Wildlife Federation.