After the postgame brawl between the Michigan and Wisconsin men’s basketball teams on Sunday, some people questioned why teams even shake hands after games anymore.
The question crept up in conversations about Wolverines coach Juwan Howard and what his punishment should be after the swipe he took at a Wisconsin assistant in the handshake line started the scuffle. Howard was suspended Monday night for the remainder of the regular season.
But for longtime Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, the notion that postgame handshakes are in any way a problem is “ridiculous.”
“That, to me, would be the biggest farce, joke, ridiculous nature of anything I’ve ever heard of,” Izzo told reporters Monday. “We’ve already taught these poor 18-year-olds that when you’re told to go to class and you don’t like it, you can leave. We’ve already told these kids that if you’re not happy, you can do something else. We’ve already told these kids that it’s hard to hold them accountable.
“And now we’re going to tell them to not man up and walk down a line to someone who’s kicked your butt and have enough class to shake their hand is utterly ridiculous. So if the president said it, I think he’s full of it. If the best coach in America said it, I think … that gets me way more than this incident. Because we’re already teaching these kids nothing and we’re going to do something like that?”
Tom Izzo with his thoughts on getting rid of handshake line at the end of games pic.twitter.com/eSC1iuuOw0
— CoachTube.com (@thecoachtube) February 22, 2022
The topic, Izzo said, “hit a sore spot” with him, which was evident by his four-minute rant.
“Those are the moments you learn the most about people,” he said. “If that’s what we’ve come to, shame on whoever said it. In my opinion, that is asinine.”
Immediately after Howard’s swing started the brawl, some questioned the post-game sportsmanship practice.
“Abolish the handshake line. It’s played out,” tweeted Rex Chapman, the ex-basketball player who is now a social media influencer and soon-to-be CNN host.
Georgetown coach Patrick Ewing told Sportsnet 590 The Fan in Toronto that he would also remove the handshakes.
“I don’t like the handshake line,” Ewing said. “I don’t like it because anything is possible. You’re just getting through a heated battle, a heated game and anything can happen to make things worse, which is what happened in that situation. If it’s my call, I think we should just take away the handshake line. Just do like we did last year in COVID. You wave bye and you move on.”
Stephen A. Smith even discussed the topic on ESPN’s “First Take” on Monday. But the backlash to the idea has been far bigger than those suggesting handshake lines are the problem.
“And I don’t want to hear people say ‘this is why we should get rid of handshake lines.’ If you can’t handle a handshake line, you shouldn’t be in college athletics,” tweeted CBS Sports’ Seth Davis.
If any team decides to not shake hands after games, Izzo has an easy solution for what he and his team will do, and he even demonstrated it for reporters.
“You’re going to see 15 of my guys walk down shaking air, and I’m going to shake air,” he said.
Tom Izzo spent a lot of time today talking about the Michigan-Wisconsin incident. Adds that the discussion of removing handshakes from sports is “asinine.”
— Kellan Buddy (@kellanbuddy) February 21, 2022
Says he and his team will “Shake air” if another team decides not to after a game. pic.twitter.com/LnVDDJhtrD
• Jacob Calvin Meyer can be reached at jmeyer@washingtontimes.com.
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