There’s no question that Tom Izzo is not pleased with the direction college athletics has gone in.

It’s not the same landscape it was when he first joined Michigan State as an assistant over 40 years ago or when he took over as head coach a bit over a decade after that.

This new era — that isn’t so “new” anymore but has developed into something it wasn’t initially — of NIL and the transfer portal is one of chaos and without strict regulation. It’s turned the sport into a product that is appalling, and there are no signs of it getting better.

Despite all this, Izzo adapts with the times. “Fat tie, skinny tie,” as he refers to it.

What makes him want to? Why doesn’t he follow the path some of his former colleagues have and leave before things get more out of hand?

Izzo said it’s the “passion.”

“I still have a passion, I still have energy,” said the 70-year-old head coach. “I still want to make a difference. I still want to help kids live their dream that I got to live mine. All the right reasons.

“I gave in last year to begging the committees and trying to focus in on — and then it hits you again. I mean, it’s not getting better; it’s getting worse. But it hasn’t gotten so bad where I’m ready to give in to what a lot of people think I should give in to. I’m not; I’m still fist fighting the fight.

On a more positive note, Izzo makes sure to remind himself that what he does is a privilege.

“I get to do something that few people get to do,” he said. “I get to be in a locker room when a guy is crying that’s supposed to be this mountain of a man and he’s crying because he just lost an Elite Eight game. And I’ve gotten the chance to sit in the green room and watch a kid fulfill a lifetime dream of getting to the NBA and watching his family and his world change.

“And I keep thinking to myself, ‘living your dream.’ So, I’m still living the dream. Is it a little foggy? Hell yeah it is. Is it a little bit harder to navigate? Hell yeah it is. So, what do I do? I call Jonathan [Smith], I call Adam [Nightingale], I call different coaches, I call coaches again all over the country that I don’t even know. Just to get a feel, just to get some information, just to get some help. ‘How are you dealing with it? What are you doing better?’

“When I quit doing that, I’ll probably hang it up. But I got no interest in hanging it up when I still have the passion, the love for the game. And I’ve said this. I absolutely love my day-to-day dealings with my players, I love my job, I love the university I work for.

“I have not respected my profession as much. Because I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job of helping our people navigate these problems. And we cause some of the problems in certain ways, too.”

While Izzo does make the effort to adapt, he’s cautious not to stray from who he is.

“I got to change every six, seven, eight years,” he said. “You got to make adjustments. But if you ever change what you believe in — you’re going to get up every morning and brush your teeth … and you look in that mirror, and if you don’t like that person looking back at you, you went too far.

“Right now, I don’t like the looks of that

person, but I like the person.”