He has been a great PR guy and a great basketball coach but I would say he has been something other than a class act. He was a willing participant in the sweeping under the rug the very credible rape allegations against Painr and Appling and housed another sexual predator (Walton) in his basement. Even going back to Mateen Cleaves and his liquor store theft. Both Cleaves and Appling had further criminal issues after leaving MSU. While tough to pin that on Izzo, his enabling behavior while they were Spartans, couldn't have been positive. You may not have heard of Brock Washington but
" A survivor of sexual assault retained Grewal Law PLLC to investigate her case involving Michigan State University basketball player Brock Washington. The Michigan Attorney General promised to review her case to see whether or not it should be reopened, after the Ingham County Prosecutor’s office declined to press charges.
This is not the first time Washington finds himself at the center of a criminal sexual assault investigation. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor assault and battery charge in 2018, although the case was first classified as criminal sexual conduct in the fourth degree, a high-court misdemeanor, carrying a two-year prison sentence.
In 2017, during the investigation of the first case involving Washington, Tom Izzo and two assistant basketball coach may have interfered with a witness involved in the case while the matter was pending. The witness had not yet given his statement to the police when approached by Izzo and company. Izzo would later go on to criticize the media’s handling of the case and lamented, “[t]he sad thing is, I think we should, probably as a Michigan State community, apologize to this young man and his family who has been named without, at least in that report, any evidence of any wrongdoing.” Washington pled guilty to assault and battery charges months later.
Still, Washington continued to dress and attend all games during the 2017-2018 season, and it was not until the 2020 sexual assault investigation did Izzo suspend Washington, a redshirt sophomore, from the team.
Such tactics by Izzo and the athletic department in general at MSU are far from unusual. As extensively outlined in the 2018 Outside The Lines report, Izzo and others have made it a habit to intervene in criminal sexual assault investigations to protect their own. Cases involving athletes are often handled “in-house,” or within the athletic department, rather than following Title IX processes, allowing coaches to decide what repercussions, if any, the athletes face in some cases.
There is a long list of MSU basketball players, and football players, whose cases were given preferential treatment, prioritizing membership with the team over campus and victim and safety."
https://lansing.legalexaminer.com/legal/msu-athletes-still-not-held-accountable-for-sexual-assault-crimes-after-years-of-scrutiny-and-cover-up/
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Thu Aug 19, 2021 9:17 pm
