Tom Izzo's potential move to the Cleveland Cavaliers is still just that: potential. It's speculation. Everything that follows in this post is just a noodle, a bit of fun theoretical thinking in the wake of the news that Izzo is leaning closer and closer to leaving Michigan State to take an NBA job.

But in the way of fun things to think about, it doesn't get much better than this: Could Tom Crean leave Indiana to take the MSU job?

That's the question asked by our college hoops Rumor Central Thursday , by way of Kent Sterling, an independent sports journalist:

"So what does that mean for Indiana? It would be ridiculous to think that Crean wouldn't crawl backward over broken glass up the Ruel W. Steele Memorial Highway to I-465 around the eastside of Indianapolis to I-69 up to East Lansing to take the job. Michigan State is loaded like Lindsay Lohan on a week long Amsterdam bender, and Indiana is a long way from the nearest bar."

Whenever anyone talks about replacing Izzo, former assistants come to mind, and the most successful former assistant -- the one who would have been a top candidate for the Michigan State job at any point while he was at Marquette -- is Crean. But Crean isn't at Marquette anymore. He's the head coach of one of the most storied programs in the history of college basketball. In a vacuum, the Indiana job is better than Michigan State, one of five or six positions college hoops coaches set their sights on from the moment they sit on their first graduate assistant bench.

But we're not in a vacuum. The current reality is that Crean's talent is barely NIT-worthy. His 2010 recruiting class isn't great. His 2011 recruiting class has yet to yield a game-changing player. The rebuilding effort at IU is taking a little bit longer than anyone would like; Crean no doubt stepped into a situation worse than even he imagined.

Meanwhile, Michigan State is loaded. The Spartans have a top recruiting class, but that recruiting class will struggle to crack the lineup -- MSU is that experienced and that good. Izzo returns all the key pieces from a team that limped -- literally limped -- to a Final Four finish. Healthy? Look out.

Most think Michigan State is one of three teams that can plausibly take home a title in 2010-11. Any coach stepping into that team has a chance to win the title before they even step foot on campus. Throw that in with Izzo's efforts to make MSU a national program in his 15-year run, and that's an unusually great situation.

All of which is not to say Tom Crean would leave, or that he's going to. Again, just fun speculation here. But the question remains: Would Tom Crean leave? Would any coach? The question is less about Crean than about the jobs themselves. Does the lure of Michigan State's talent trump the profile and tradition -- not to mention the challenge, and all coaches love a challenge -- of coaching at Indiana University?

Well, what would you do?