How the **** is Will Wade still employed?
For those of you who have turned your attention to Michigan’s next opponent, and casually have been reading up on LSU and their coach, you perhaps did the same double take I did when reading about the sheer quality and quantity of NCAA violations Will Wade has managed to commit in such a short time there. Even when accounting for the conference and school, that dude is something else.
For the uninitiated, here’s one useful primer
www.si.com/college/2020/08/27/will-wade-allegations-lsu
I “get” that players should be paid but that is some SMU level-DNGAF ing that needs whatever hammer the NCAA has left (if any) to come down.
The best way to make him feel bad is to beat LSU on Monday
Also the best way to have him face repercussions - we have seen that some schools will bend over backwards to protect dirty/cheating coaches as long as they win. If he consistently flounders in the tournament, they may not shield him for long.
Actual violations should have consequences beyond sports
I’m all for nailing the cheaters, but most NCAA violations are just ‘company’ rules. If you keep taking two hour lunches, you might lose your job, but you’re not going to jail.
I don't think anyone is proposing putting a coach in jail for making contact with a recruit during a dead period. But arranging for the payment of large sums of cash that completely eludes the normal payment and reporting channels is money laundering. Multiple individuals conspiring to do so is evidence of a criminal conspiracy. An organization doing this across multiple sports (fb,bb) is RICO. This is a few levels above picking up your dry cleaning while on the clock
Paying players is a little bigger than taking a 2 hour lunch...Think they’re paying the taxes on the hundreds of thousands of dollars they’re paying out? I’m not a lawyer, but pretty sure normal people get in trouble for not paying taxes...
'Sports' is no longer sports, it is a big time business worth millions of dollars. It's about winning millions of dollars to help your Sports department or other departments within your University. Maybe padding the salaries of coaches or administrators. It also affects the student athletes; you let this slide, they will learn that 'if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying hard enough' is where the bar is. This is a huge problem that puts the schools that do things the right way at a huge disadvantage. There is a school out there whose team worked their asses off to make this tournament and didn't get that opportunity because of schools like LSU. This issue go across state lines, that's why the FBI is in on this. This guy is costing 'Justice' tons of money to bring him to justice; he needs to be made an example of and should be fined, required to some sort of retraining on the importance of why he shouldn't do the things he did, and to suspend his coaching abilities for a decent amount of time. At least.
March 21st, 2021 at 10:01 AM ^
I agree, but they shouldn’t even be in the tournament, Will Wade shouldn’t be coach, and their whole starting lineup should be ineligible. If we lose, in like 2 years, the record books are going to say we lost to (removed) and we currently know this and we have known this for like 2 years
March 21st, 2021 at 10:27 AM ^
If we lose, in like 2 years, the record books are going to say we lost to (removed) and we currently know this and we have known this for like 2 years
This exactly. But I guarantee that, should LSU make it to the Final 4 or more, they sure as hell won't remove their banners marking this season.
March 21st, 2021 at 10:45 AM ^
Won’t get penalized for it either
NCAA is mostly toothless/spineless when it comes to enforcement.
The "players should be paid" trope is full of misdirection and inaccuracies. In short, if the players want to be "paid", then they should be *paying* their way through school (and also paying for the top-tier training/development they receive at the schools - which in 99% of cases is giving them all these marketable skills and name recognition).
An internship, if you will
But internships are outside of school typically... and often unpaid.
March 21st, 2021 at 10:58 AM ^
Internships outside of school for *skilled* and *lucrative* professions are paid. See: all of engineering, finance, etc. NCAA basketball is pretty skilled and lucrative.
March 21st, 2021 at 12:04 PM ^
Some are (again, personal experience).
The key word here is *outside* of the schools.
We have these debates every time paying athletes comes up, and it's always the same.
I assume that anyone on academic scholarships who also get paid as a research assistant or are head students who get paid as part of a grant by a professor or a department should actually be "paying" their way through school as well, since they'll be given access to top-notch resources and personnel to improve their career options.
As always, my point remains that I don't know why so many people get bent out of shape if an athlete gets additional compensation from the school. All those ads you see during March Madness translate into billions of dollars in TV rights, licensing, etc. to the NCAA administration and the universities. Will Wade gets paid about $2.5M (plus all the additional benefits he gets as a HC) and yet the notion that his players, the people we actually pay to watch, might get a piece of that is beyond the pale.
Paying players isn't really a misdirection or inaccurate. It can be something as easy as NIL rights, or an additional stipend attached to their scholarship, or some combination. And we're not just talking about the two or three money-generating sports - all-American wrestlers, women's basketball players, etc. would all benefit from the work they put in, with no cost to the consumers.
Again, misdirection and obfuscation.
Undegraduate students who go to school (even on full academic scholarship) can also work part-time in research labs and the like while taking classes and get paid... but it is a job and has nothing to do with the scholarship that is paying their tuition/room/board/etc. That is the prerogative of the professor/department and whatever funds they have available (and in a large number of instances, those positions are unpaid because the funds are *not* - yet the students work it anyway since that experience is too valuable to pass up). I have seen (and done) this all first hand - both as a student worker and hiring student workers.
If & how much money a school makes on tv agreements and licensing rights has nothing to do with the agreement between the school and the students coming immediately out of high school (who are entering these universities the same as any other student). Almost entirely, these student-athletes are entering school with little to no professionally marketable skills or NIL... the schools give them the training/development and (more importantly) the *platform* to showcase those skills to employers (NBA, NFL, etc.). If you want to have an *honest* discussion about how much of "the pie" the student-athletes are getting, then sit down and actually calculate the cash-equivalent value of all of these benefits (both athletic and academic) the student-athletes receive at the major programs - and include the fact that they are guaranteed for 4 years minimum even if the players wash out athletically. If the high school student-athletes think this deal is unfavorable (which we see is almost exclusively not the case, since there is so much fierce competition to snap up these scholarship sport opportunities), then they are free to pursue other options (minor league basketball/baseball/hockey/etc., overseas leagues, or direct to majors). The schools are *not* limiting anyone's opportunities here.
I agree that some of the TV contact and salary numbers are obscene - but the solution is not to inject even more money into this and further commercialize *student sports* at (mostly) public universities. The better solution is to stop allowing any commercialization of *school* sports - especially at public universities (which in theory should be freely available/viewable to the tax paying public).
March 21st, 2021 at 10:12 AM ^
Agreed.
Also, the universities don't want to pay the student athletes as that takes money away from building new facilities (sports and academic) and hiring better and more professors.
The money has to come from somewhere.
If forced to pay the student athletes the universities will inevitably raise tuition on the student non-athletes.
March 21st, 2021 at 10:52 AM ^
Well, the athletic department revenue doesn't go to academic positions typically so that's unlikely a shared cost.
As for facilities, the fact major P5 schools remake their weight rooms every couple of years seems to be an attempt to spend all the money they have, not because of some demanding need to upgrade dilapidated facilities. And if it's NIL rights, that money wasn't ever going to the schools anyway, so it's not money lost to them.
March 21st, 2021 at 12:23 PM ^
There's money in and money out. Doesn't matter what bucket somebody dumped it in.
NIL has nothing to do with the universities paying the student athletes. Different source of money that the unversities don't have access to raid..
March 21st, 2021 at 10:47 AM ^
Undegraduate students who go to school (even on full academic scholarship) can also work part-time in research labs and the like while taking classes and get paid... but it is a job and has nothing to do with the scholarship that is paying their tuition/room/board/etc. That is the prerogative of the professor/department and whatever funds they have available (and in a large number of instances, those positions are unpaid because the funds are *not* - yet the students work it anyway since that experience is too valuable to pass up). I have seen (and done) this all first hand - both as a student worker and hiring student workers.
So, for one thing the job they have comes to them via their academic skills, not unlike the athletic skills possessed by athletes. They are able to work as a student assistant in the lab because they are...students at the school, which they gained admission to along with their scholarship. Also, the fact their payment is at the prerogative of the department and its funds directly applies to the NCAA. They have billions of dollars, and most P5 athletic programs are flush with cash. They have the funds yet decide to spend it elsewhere because the non-binding rules of the NCAA dictates they don't have to pay their workers and we all just went along with it.
If & how much money a school makes on tv agreements and licensing rights has nothing to do with the agreement between the school and the students coming immediately out of high school (who are entering these universities the same as any other student). Almost entirely, these student-athletes are entering school with little to no professionally marketable skills or NIL... the schools give them the training/development and (more importantly) the *platform* to showcase those skills to employers (NBA, NFL, etc.).
Well, for one thing regular students are in fact not barred from leveraging their abilities, skills, likeness, etc. for marketable gain. I certainly don't remember having to sign a contract when I was admitted stating I wasn't able to get run a twitch stream for profit, endorse products or services I used, or gain employment while attending the university. And last I checked, a university gives a platform for every student to showcase his/her skills for future employers, but only some of them are given an additional burden to not concurrently obtain financial gain for these skills while in school.
If the high school student-athletes think this deal is unfavorable (which we see is almost exclusively not the case, since there is so much fierce competition to snap up these scholarship sport opportunities), then they are free to pursue other options (minor league basketball/baseball/hockey/etc., overseas leagues, or direct to majors). The schools are *not* limiting anyone's opportunities here.
By this same tortured logic, nobody should complain about anything with schools or seek to better them because of how precious a commodity admittance is. Also, you better not ask your boss for a raise or better tools because, heck, you can just go find another job. And also, let us not forget that the NCAA and NBA/NFL specifically blocked athletes from jumping to the professional leagues right out of HS because, and this may shock you, the NCAA wanted to make sure they had a steady stream of top-notch athletes to fill their ranks and raise billions off of before they could get paid.
I agree that some of the TV contact and salary numbers are obscene - but the solution is not to inject even more money into this and further commercialize *student sports* at (mostly) public universities. The better solution is to stop allowing any commercialization of *school* sports - especially at public universities (which in theory should be freely available/viewable to the tax paying public).
This model exists with D3 athletics if you want to follow them. Of course, they also tend to misuse academic scholarships as a substitute for athletic ones, so even there they know the value of athletics to the overall school environment.
Anyway, all of these arguments you're making boil down to you having a personal preference for a version of college athletics that arguably never existed. There is money to pay the athletes, there is an ability by the schools and athletes to figure out a compromise, and yet they are being blocked from doing so because the organization that oversees the purse strings doesn't want to open them up. That's it. NIL rights are not restricted for students in any other way EXCEPT athletes. There's no reason not to let them do so, and public acknowledgement of this right has obviously taken ahold due to all the NIL rights laws being passed/brought to the floors in various states.
If you don't like money in college sports then so be it; I'd say you should probably find something else to enjoy because money has ALWAYS been in college athletics and it's unlikely to go anywhere (nor should it necessarily have to go away due to some rigid "purity" argument).
March 21st, 2021 at 12:50 PM ^
As far the paid student work activities (such as the laboratory research example you used), the students become attractive candidates for those paid outside-of-academic-duties positions because of the academic skills they possess at the time of their employment. Note - very clearly - that these positions have nothing to do with their enrollment offers or other financial assistance they recieve from the university (they were not offer scholarships to the school for being laboratory assistants; those were opportunities that came up along the way in the course of their academic career). You want to contort this (regarding department funding) by using an NCAA analogy (again, misdirection) - yet here is the better comparison: student workers within the athletic department. Those full-time undergraduate students are working side jobs in the department doing various functions (ranging from mundane clerical/custodial work up to perhaps some specialized functions such as sports medicine, training, communications, etc.) and receiving a paycheck for actions that may be *related* to what brought them to the university, yet those functions are *not* why the university offered them admission nor why they offered them any financial assistance such as full tuition, room, board, etc.
This parlays into a later topic about conditions - for typical newly admitted undegraduate students that *do not* receive all of these generous benefits, the university does not place such restrictions on what kind of outside personal revenue they can generate. Why should it be so contentious that, in exchange for a guaranteed (regardless of the *quality* of their performance, just so long as they do not flunk out or do something egregiously illegal) offer of 4+ years of full financial benefits and training/development/etc., that the forgo (for that short) this outside revenue source (which for most student athletes isn't of high value until later in their college athletic careers, if at all)? It is a compromise - one that is it almost always worth it in the long run. You want them to have their cake and eat it too.
Your whole arguement basically distills to "the schools have ridiculous amounts of money and they need to distribute it in such way" - yet 1) the schools are the entities taking the greater risk by giving all these upfront financial benefits to hundreds/thousands of student-athletes upfront, the majority of which may not provide a direct return to the school) and 2) perhaps there are other (better) avenues of this system to advocate reform than simply giving the players more money - let's "open the hood" on the dirty black box this is college revenue sports and make it transparent, and most importantly 3) these are still *schools* of higher academic and not commercial sports enterprises - maybe we should keep that in mind.
Circling back to the platform comment, the schools do *not* provide the same "platform" to normal students as they do for revenue sport student-athletes. They provide *a* platform, but they don't have an entire marketing and communications department to help provide graphics/stats/national network promos and other personalized individual services for the average student that they do for a star football/basketball player. Don't try to obfuscate this.
You say the NFL and NBA explicitly blocked taking kids out of high school to "protect" the NCAA stream of revenue - I would like to see *explicitly* where that is documented and not just opinions of outsiders. Maybe it could also be for reasons such as 1) most high schoolers are not physically ready for this level of play and the high pro league rules help ensure that they take time to develop or 2) maybe the leagues don't *want* to be seen as luring kids away from school (bad PR). You frame it as some grand collusion between the pros and the NCAA - since when have the pro leagues ever given a damn about the NCAA or done anything overtly to protect the NCAA's interests? You conveniently overlook the fact that these rules have been in place for many decades (some even longer) - long before the TV contracts made this such a massive financial boon.
These various rules are not there to "exploit" the student athletes as you claim - they are there to offset the major benefits they receive from the university that the rest of the student body does not - and to prevent the shady end-arounds that would transform a legitimate extra-curricular student activity into a bloated pay-to-play spectacle. Instead of warring against the universities - perhaps the effort would be better spent working to expand the paid playing opportunities they can take outside of school.
March 21st, 2021 at 10:52 AM ^
Brian said this before, but there’s a very easy (and time-tested) mechanism to determine the fair amount the athletes should be paid: the free market. Let all universities offer whatever they want (scholarships, money, free sandwiches) and see how the compensation works out. As it is now, the universities are operating as an anti-competitive trust and are one-sidedly determining the compensation.
If this was a normal, taxable, employment agreement you might have a case. Yet this is an optional student activity offered for full-time students at a school (and for which they could go and find playing opportunities outside of an academic environment if they really wanted - they may not pay NFL/NBA/NHL money but are still there), so the legal argument is not really that strong.
Yeah, agreed the legal case isn’t there at the moment. This is why most of the push has been to change the law so that these athletes are classified as employees, so that this logic can apply. If college basketball is a profit-generating business, and the athletes are the primary labor, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be classified as employees.
Why?
1. LSU doesn't care if he cheats.
2. His conference doesn't care if he cheats.
3. The NCAA doesn't want to do anything to upset their cash-cow conference so they're not going to do anything about it.
So.....why would he be fired?
Putting aside the moral and ethical arguments, he should be fired because he was sloppy about it and got himself caught.
And his sloppiness effected the bottom line dollar ROI for LSU, SEC, and NCAA interests in exactly what way?
If he hasn't been fired for any of these offenses by now, he won't be. He may still be fired for on-court offenses, though - losing games.
His sloppiness has brought scrutiny, scorn and negative attention onto the program. How much has it affected recruiting, hiring, fundraising, etc. when people know that the NCAA (and/or feds) could come down on them at any minute?
March 21st, 2021 at 10:59 AM ^
LSU has been hammered in recent years with this scandal, apparently covering up numerous sexual assaults by football players, and various other payment violations and have a national title plus two top-5 recruiting classes to show for it. And in spite of those violations they recorded amazing revenue.
There is 0 evidence that fans or alums care about these scandals to a meaningful degree. Michigan athletics covered up/failed to recognize a sexual assaulting doctor for decades and I don't think they've lost much support because of it. It's because nobody really cares that much about the morality of college athletics.
That does not mean there was a lack of adverse effects from the NCAA cloud over there head (with more possible to come).
I see no one had any plausible arguments to your points. Well done.
Cheaters gonna cheat, but NIL can't come soon enough. Will it be here by football season? What are we still waiting on? Someone/something needs to force the NCAAs hand to action now instead of some potential future date. Just start giving kids deals and dare the NCAA to do something about it.
LSU literally doesn’t give a fuck about anything other than their teams winning games. It’s clearly been shown that Will Wade is above the rules in Baton Rouge, and if you think he’s given too much leeway, how much do you think is going to be given to Orgeron and the football team one year removed from going undefeated, dickslapping Alabama and winning a national title?
The only thing that will cause Will Wade to be run out of town is losing enough games. Maybe also if he’s caught running a chain of underground child sex traffickers, but losing is probably a safer bet to run him out.
"...if he’s caught running a chain of underground child sex traffickers..."
So now he's a Democr... Wait, this isn't Q. Wait, this is Louisiana. Wait, no politics.
NO POLITICS, DAMMIT!!!
March 21st, 2021 at 10:05 AM ^
Maybe also if he’s caught running a chain of underground child sex traffickers
I mean there’s plenty of sexual assault going on in their football program and they’re still sitting pretty without any consequences, so I’m not sure about that
March 22nd, 2021 at 10:32 AM ^
“LSU literally doesn’t give a fuck about anything other than their teams winning games.”
i don’t want to start one-for-one comparisons here, but every team with 5-star recruits is paying them. Zion went to Duke...despite Kansas offering him six figures. Clean? Sure. Michigan fans really enjoyed the Fab 5, but holy hell was that a dirty accumulation of talent.
Every Power 5 team with good talent is dirty, or that talent would have gone elsewhere. Try not to be so sanctimonious when calling out others
It is frustrating to play against a team openly cheating. Like if we pay everyone, fine, but why is LSU paying guys basically out in the open and suffering zero consequences?
It does warm my heart a bit that Will Wade is such a crappy coach that he is cheating in every way imaginable and he's still running a mediocre coach in an ok conference. Hopefully we beat them and can have a good laugh at his expense
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Edwards
Bribery must be a way of life in Louisiana.
Look back at Governor Edwards' history.
I lived in New Orleans for a couple years. They call it “the Louisiana way.”
I make “strong ass offer” and OBJ making it rain on TV jokes down here all the time and either the people I’m speaking to have no idea what I’m talking about or don’t care.
Funny you bring up Ed Edwards, a local radio personality recently was lamenting about some LA HS football player going to Bama or something and he said “When Ed Edwards was governor, all of these guys went to LSU, they never left the state!” Gee, I wonder why that could be?
He's winning. It's America.
It’s Louisiana. At least the other teams under investigation have faced some consequences.
March 21st, 2021 at 10:16 AM ^
Thanks for posting. This guy just became one of my favorite journalists. I love this:
Poor Will. It must be so hard to be him, having suffered absolutely no consequences for the past two years while his program remains in NCAA limbo, collecting his $2.5 million salary, continuing to get blue-chip recruits and having to turn on his phone after a game and learn that Dickie V is maybe the only person in Wade’s orbit who isn't willfully ignoring reality.
There was an article that blasted him a couple months back and why they haven’t fired him. I believe that the investigation is ongoing and cannot fire him for that reason, IIRC. This is obviously despite the whole wiretap of him saying how much he was willing to pay. It’s an absolute joke that them, Kansas and Arizona have had nothing done to them. Mark Emmrett is running ball into the ground.
What’s the difference between this and the Ed Martin scandal? Why is LSU not being punished?
March 21st, 2021 at 10:01 AM ^
Because they will not admit to anything nor cooperate with an investigation.
The old theory was that if he cooperated with the investigation, were transparent, and self-penalized your program, you would get some leniency from the NCAA. Now in this modern age if you obfuscate things, if you hide things, and if you deny things, you might get a slap on the wrist - UNC, Miami, LSU, and Kansas I'm looking at you.
March 21st, 2021 at 10:12 AM ^
You forgot stonewalling. That worked perfectly for LSU.