In the wake of Michigan basketball coach Juwan Howard striking an opposing coach in the face when he should have been shaking his hand has sparked the requisite amount of social media questions and debates over the last few days.
Should Howard have been fired or was a five-game suspension enough?
Should Wisconsin coach Greg Gard have called a meaningless timeout with his team up by 15 points with just few seconds left, thus incurring the wrath of Howard?
Did Howard have a right to be upset about the meaningless timeout when his own team was applying a full-court press at the time — or are only losing coaches allowed to keep coaching hard once the game’s outcome has already been decided?
And then there was the most troubling debate of all:
Should the postgame handshake line be eliminated so as to avoid such heated disputes only seconds after an emotional game has ended?
Thankfully, Tom Izzo, the iconic coach of Michigan State, gave a perfect answer to this inane question.
“That to me would be the biggest farce, joke, ridiculous nature of anything I’ve ever heard of,” Izzo said. “Not shaking hands, that’s typical of our country right now. Instead of solving the problem, let’s make an excuse. Instead of confronting and demanding that it changes, let’s eliminate it so that we don’t have those problems.
“That’s perfect ‘us’ right now. That’s not perfect ‘me.’ That’s not happening here. So if some team doesn’t want to shake hands, you’re going to see 15 of my guys walk down and shake air. We’re going to shake air and I’m going to shake air and then we’re going to leave.”
Bravo, Tom Izzo, for speaking the truth about the cancel-culture world we’re now living in; an alternative universe where eliminating the handshake line would be par for the course.
After all, who wants to shake hands with the enemy?
God forbid that a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat would civilly acknowledge their differences and shake hands afterward.
Perish the thought of a vaccinated person and an unvaccinated person actually having a polite discussion and then shaking hands afterward.
Shudder to think of a Gator and a Seminole drowning their sorrows together, admitting they are more alike than different and then sealing their newfound respect for each other with a firm handshake.
Izzo is right.
We need to cultivate handshake lines; not eliminate them.
We need more civility, decorum and sportsmanship in society; not less of it.
We need more people listening to each other and less people screaming at one another.
We need more conversation and less consternation.
You always hear how sports is a microcosm of society, and we’ve certainly seen this play out over the last several years. Is it just me or is there less tolerance than ever among athletes, fans and coaches?
This division reached its sadly comical apex a couple of years ago when some athletes were lambasted for kneeling during the national anthem while others (see the Magic’s Jonathan Isaac) were being criticized because they stood for the national anthem.
When did sports become so angry?
When did it become trendy for coaches to act like raving maniacs during games; ranting, stomping, losing their temper and F-bombing officials?
When did it become OK for drunken, obnoxious fans to hurl vile, vitriolic insults at opposing players?
When did insensitive, profane chants among fans at sporting events become acceptable?
When did players whining and complaining about every call that goes against them become the norm? Remember the good ol’ days when basketball players would simply raise their hand and acknowledge the infraction whenever they were whistled for a foul?
And when did smiling become uncool?
Have you ever noticed when athletes pose for promotional photographs these days, they’re almost always staring and glaring at the camera with mean, menacing expressions on their faces?
I remember when a young Dwight Howard was on his way to leading the Magic to the NBA Finals back in the day, and he was actually criticized in Sports Illustrated for his grinning, good-natured demeanor. The headline on the front of the magazine read: “Too Much Fun: Can the Magic’s Dunk Machine Get Serious for a Moment.” Even former Magic GM Otis Smith told Dwight at the time to wipe the smile off of his face and start frowning more.
Sadly, Dwight listened and his beautiful smile eventually turned into an ugly scowl so that he could be perceived as more intense and intimidating.
And, so, here we are at place where glaring, grimacing, cussing, complaining, scowling, growling, stomping and screaming have become all the rage in sports and in society.
We need to change.
Juwan Howard, a basketball coach at one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, has been suspended for the rest of the regular season because he hit another coach.
In today’s partisan, polarized, politicized world, we need more people shaking each other’s hands rather than slapping each other’s faces.
