When William Fleming Tate IV was hired as LSU President, it was predicted in this space he would adapt street fighting skills honed as a lad on the streets of south Chicago to shake things up in TigerTown. The vision of a modern-day Wild Bill Hickok ruling with power and panache at the Ole War Skule was a distant dream. Mild Bill Tate cowered to the wishes of his handlers in almost every major skirmish.
Dr. Tate entered the Tiger Kingdom with gobs of goodwill as the first Black President and Chancellor in the SEC. He squandered an opportunity for historic evolution on campus. Hired a year after the George Floyd tragedy altered the American consciousness about race, Tate could have been a game changer. He leaves LSU for Rutgers with a legacy of timidity.
When Tate arrived in Louisiana, LSU was ranked 153rd nationally among colleges in the U.S. News and World Report annual survey. The Baton Rouge campus, which dates to the era of the Kingfish, crashed to 179th in the 2025 rankings from the magazine. Tulane is the top-rated Louisiana university at No. 65.
This is how LSU and other SEC schools fare in the 2025 U.S. News list for academic excellence of higher education.
18. Vanderbilt
30. Florida
30. Texas
46. Georgia
51. Texas A&M
105. Auburn
109. Missouri
109. Tennessee
121. South Carolina
132. Oklahoma
152. Kentucky
171. Alabama
171. Ole Miss
179. LSU
189. Arkansas
214. Mississippi State
Huey Long is weeping over the steep and sudden decline in stature of his university as Tate in four years saw LSU drop 26 places in the most prestigious survey of American universities. If Brian Kelly directed LSU football to a No. 14 position in the SEC, he would immediately see the exit door at Tiger Stadium.
In a conversation at Louie’s with Tate a few days after his arrival in Baton Rouge, he indicated he would not address the largely segregated Greek System at a state university where one-third of our citizens are Black. Nearly 20 percent of the student body at LSU is Black.
It came as no surprise when Tate disbanded a committee assembled by his predecessor Tom Galligan to remove names of Confederates, slave traders and lynchers from LSU buildings. LSU had started the process of excising racists from prominent places by stripping General Troy Middleton’s name from its main library because of a letter the president of LSU and chief strategist in the Battle of the Bulge wrote in 1962.
The letter advised his colleague at the University of Texas about the process of keeping the school at Austin as white as LSU was in the early Sixties.
The honor of a hallowed hero was shattered and his family faced the politics of personal destruction for a man who fought gallantly in two World Wars for the United States and altered his views about race within the decade of his horrible correspondence.
To be fair, Tate was employed at South Carolina when the Middleton decision was made. He and the LSU Board later chose to ignore other campus structures adorned with repugnant rogues who fought against America in war.
Still honored at Louisiana’s flagship institution are traitors who bought and sold black people and a former governor, John M. Parker, who was an active participant in a mob that lynched eleven Italian immigrants in New Orleans in 1891.
Tate loved the imperial nature of his post and had no stomach to offend a cadre of Confederate sympathizers yearning to return America to the balmy plantation times of 160 years ago.
Tate nonetheless decided to instigate a fight over the naming of the Dale Brown Court with one of LSU’s treasures on his 87th birthday. The feckless Chicagoan chose to inform the coach of the Gunter-Brown court adjustment on Oct. 31, 2022 at Ribs on Acadian Thruway. This gutless move ironically occurred a few miles from where Coach Brown was ripped as a N****r lover for audaciously ushering LSU basketball into the 20th Century.
When Brown flipped the middle finger at the diminutive man of letters, witnesses noted Tate all but sprinted to the parking lot. Brown’s reaction was sparked by Tate imploring a trailblazing champion of civil rights to surrender his greatest honor to “enhance his stature as a humanitarian.” Tate apparently knows nothing of bold risks Brown took as he fully integrated his team in the 1970s.
Brown inherited a program in 1972 that had one Black athlete in its history in Collis Temple. Six years later, Brown rolled out a starting five with Rudy Macklin, Dewayne Scales, Lionel Green, Kenny Higgs and Ethan Martin, all Black men from the South. At the close of the Seventies, LSU captured its first SEC Basketball title in 25 seasons with a roster stocked with minority players.
Brown was insulted by the suggestion his reputation could be improved by standing tall for fairness and inclusion. Tate should have taken notes from a courageous warrior against injustice rather than make a hasty retreat from the restaurant.
Tate did strategically steer his own destiny to a fine school in Rutgers, which is ranked 41st nationally by U.S. News. His love of the roaring crowd at athletic events will be diminished when his Scarlet Knights are devastated this football season by Ohio State and Penn State. The stadium for the state school of New Jersey at Piscataway is no competitor to the passion of the denizens and the pageantry of Death Valley.
Coach Brown will turn 90 on Halloween with Tate snugly ensconced in another state and LSU in his rear- view mirror. Tate could have been a contender for a lofty spot in the annals of history. He opted to follow the path of least resistance and use LSU as a weigh station for his new perch on the East Coast.
The Garden State is likely the last stop for LSU’s soon to be forgotten bureaucrat. Tate turns 64 on Aug. 28 and has been cagey about releasing his date of birth to the masses. It will be curious to see how this reticent man fares in a state celebrated for tough guys like Norman Mailer, Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen, Cory Booker, Dennis Rodman and Christoper Reeve. Not to mention LSU center Greg Cook, who punished Ralph Sampson and Sam Bowie on the court in 1981.
For the sake of Rutgers, let us hope Tate grows a backbone on his way to New Jersey.
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