By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Former LSU men’s basketball coach John Brady said on Tiger Rag Radio this week that LSU should never have fired Will Wade back on March 12, 2022.
“What LSU should have done was stood by Will, and I was on record as saying this four years ago,” Brady, who has been the LSU Radio Network’s men’s basketball analyst since Wade’s first season at LSU in 2017-18. “They could have fined him or suspended him for five or six games or 10 the next season.”
Then-LSU athletic director Scott Woodward fired Wade on that March 12, which was the day the NCAA’s Notice of Allegations was publicized. It would have been very difficult for LSU to keep Wade because Woodward and other LSU officials believed that would have made its punishment from the NCAA far more serious. And far more serious for the football program, which was included in the NCAA’s investigation with a Level 1 recruiting violation of its own that involved payments to offensive lineman Vadal Alexander and his family.
Woodward and LSU made a strategic decision to sacrifice Wade to soften the blow to football in particular. And Wade was directly involved in five Level 1 – the most serious – recruiting violations.
WILL WADE’S LOUISIANA PURCHASES
The NCAA’s NOA said Wade paid cash to recruits, made job offers to recruits, paid outside parties to recruit players to LSU, sent cash to a former player’s girlfriend so she would keep quiet about payments to her boyfriend and directed payments to a recruit through his wife’s bank account.
The men’s basketball program drew 11 violations in all with eight Level 1 violations, including “lack of institutional control,” which has long been considered the most serious in NCAA history.
The NCAA said Wade obstructed its investigation by “concealing evidence” and “lying” to NCAA officials as recently as November of 2021 in interviews. Wade was charged with “unethical conduct,” and his “cheating” was “planned, schemed and purposeful,” according to the notice.
“Wade’s conduct was deliberate and committed after substantial planning,” the NOA said. “Specifically, Wade offered inducements to secure prospective student-athlete’s (name redacted) commitment to LSU and prospective student-athlete’s (name redacted) commitment to LSU and paid (name redacted) for his services as an unauthorized recruiter for prospective student-athlete (name redacted).”
A statement by LSU on Wade’s firing at the time said another reason it fired Wade was because he “did not cooperate with LSU’s or the NCAA’s investigations of alleged recruiting violations.”
In the end, LSU’s strategy worked as it did receive a light sentence from the NCAA.
Brady is confident that Wade’s second term as LSU basketball coach will be successful. That term will be free of the rules that got Wade fired in his first term because programs can now pay recruits according to new NCAA rules involving Name, Image & Likeness (NIL) that began having a major impact on recruiting nationally shortly after Wade was fired by LSU.
Wade is currently trying to sign approximately 13 players through the NCAA Transfer Portal with a roster budget estimated anywhere from $14 million to $20 million.
“From what I hear, LSU is going to have their NIL roster money equaling the top four or five teams in the SEC,” Brady said.
It was approximately $8 million last year for coach Matt McMahon, who finished 3-15 in the SEC for the second straight year in his four season and was fired.
“Will Wade is the perfect guy LSU could have hired to ignite the fan base, excite the fan base, bring it together,” Brady said. “He’s the only guy I know who can hit the ground running at LSU and raise more NIL dollars because of how well the fans think of him.”
BETTER ARGUMENT FOR JOHN BRADY NOT BEING FIRED THAN WILL WADE NOT BEING FIRED
Brady does know a thing or two about coaches being fired. He was fired midway through the 2007-08 season – less than two years after taking LSU to its first Final Four in 20 years. LSU was 8-13 overall and 1-6 in the SEC at the time then-LSU athletic director Skip Bertman fired Brady, who was 17-15 and 5-11 the year after the Final Four.
But in 2007-08, Brady was without star forward Tasmin Mitchell, who was lost for the season just three games in because of a shin injury. Brady also lost starting center Chris Johnson for seven games with a broken hand.
The next season, new coach Trent Johnson got Mitchell and Johnson back healthy along with star players Marcus Thornton and Garrett Temple left by Brady, and the Tigers went 27-8 overall, won the SEC at 13-3 and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Thornton averaged 21.1 points a game and was named the SEC Player of the Year. Mitchell scored 16.3 a game with 7.2 rebounds. Johnson averaged 7.1 points and 7.2 rebunds. And Temple scored 7.1 points a game with 3.8 assists.
Johnson knew what he walked into and gracefully gave Brady an SEC championship ring. Perhaps Johnson realized what many others did at the time and still do to this day – Brady shouldn’t have been fired.
“Tasmin and Garrett might have asked him to give me a ring, but he still did it,” Brady said later. “And I really appreciated it.”
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