Will Wade is probably not okay
So uhhh, the wiretapped phone call of Will Wade (LSU bball coach) is certainly something. He's clearly talking about compensation to players and their families in the ballpark of NBA minimum salary "for a two or three year kid." Can't imagine what clear lottery one-and-done types get then.
Link to ESPN story on it.
Pretty damning stuff.
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change."
But DON'T YOU DARE allow the schools up North to come below the Mason-Dixon line for an extended period of recruiting that's on the up and up.
Come on, I'm FUCKING sick of this shit. I hate the SEC, glad we're not a part of it, but pissed that everyone just turns a blind eye. It took the FBI to expose this.
Yep. The only surprising thing in the whole affair is that they got caught.
The NCAA is a joke. I really, really wish Michigan would just leave the NCAA and start a new league with Stanford, Ga. Tech, ND, etc. and straight-up pay the players on the books.
Isn’t the NBA league min like $500k a year?
How much longer until the Rick Pitino-to-LSU rumors?
UNC got away with a slap on the wrist for essentially letting its athletes take classes where they could write papers that a toddler could right. Sean Miller was caught on recording last year where he was offering 100k to Christian Dawkins if he would come to play at Arizona. And he's still got a job.
You think anything is going to happen to this guy? I doubt it. And to be honest, its hard for me to blame him for doing it, especially if he knows he's going to get away with it.
Just out of curiosity, I scoped out an LSU message board to try and get a sense of the pulse from their fans and great googly-moogly, they simply do not care that they're cheating. The majority of the comments were, "great, this year is awesome, keep up the good work and don't get caught next time". There was a decent percentage of, "yea, we all know what he meant, but what a slick guy that he never actually spelled out what he was paying, he's guilty but will be able to deflect and deny". It was actually pretty repulsive. The other small percent of comments were, "well, 'bama gets away with it in football".
Eh... I don't hold that against them. There's nothing inherently immoral about paying a guy or his family in order to secure his services. If it was a Penn State or Michigan State situation in which people were actually harmed and they were justifying that, then yeah, that would be repulsive. But making excuses for a coach who paid a kid's family so that he would play basketball there? It's a bad look, but "repulsive" is a bit strong.
Sure, I certainly don't mean it's repulsive in the grand scheme of life. You're totally right it isn't the same realm as msu or psu, or kids dying of cancer, or genocide, or any "real life" horrible things. Within the context of sports though, and the rules currently being what they are, I'm repulsed by their willingness to support/rationalize blatant cheating. Should the rules be changed? Probably. Is blatant disregard for the rules in order to achieve personal success the right way to go about enacting that change? Probably not. That's what I have a problem with (not necessarily the kids getting paid).
I just have to add that I am sickened by the hypocrisy. Not surprised, but still sickened. Dick Vitale and Stephen A. and Dan Wolken and everyone else tweeting about how horrible this is, what a humiliation for LSU, they have to fire Wade now.
COME ON. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE GUYS KNOWS THAT THIS GOES ON AT DOZENS OF SCHOOLS INCLUDING VIRTUALLY ALL OF THE BIGGEST BASKETBALL SCHOOLS.
And most of the other schools differ only in scale, not in principle.
It is disgusting to hear the pundits react with their "Shocked, SHOCKED," and "This is unacceptable" takes. They know this happens everywhere. 100% hypocrisy. If they are calling for Wade to be fired, they should be calling for almost everyone to be fired.