Jay Bilas sounds off on the Will Wade suspension situation at LSU and the inequity of treatment for players compared to coaches by the NCAA. (1:53) LSU has suspended men's basketball coach Will Wade indefinitely, the school announced Friday. The decision comes a day after reports that FBI wiretaps intercepted telephone calls between Wade and aspiring business manager Christian Dawkins, in which Wade expressed frustration about his inability to close what he described as a "strong-ass offer" for a recruit. "Recent media reports regarding Coach Will Wade are without question concerning to us all," read a statement from LSU president/chancellor F. King Alexander and athletic director Joe Alleva. "As such, we and university officials have taken deliberate and purposeful steps to fairly assess and adequately address the situation. As we have done since media reports first surfaced months ago, we are closely coordinating with the NCAA with every step. They have our full cooperation and we will continue to report to them all facts and information on this matter. "All of us at LSU share the obligation to protect the integrity of this institution, as such we have suspended Head Coach Will Wade indefinitely until such time as we can ensure full compliance with the NCAA, as well as institutional policies and standards. Assistant coach Tony Benford will assume the duties of interim coach." Wade expressed his commitment to LSU's players and coaches in a statement and said more facts are yet to come out. "I cannot comment at this time on various media reports, except to say that they do not begin to tell the full story," Wade said in the statement. "I understand the University had to take action before all the facts are in, but I would ask everyone to withhold their judgment until the record is complete." SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement that he supports LSU's suspension of Wade. "The information in recent news reports is very disturbing, if true," read the statement. "Considering the existing circumstances, LSU has taken appropriate action today while the investigation continues. The SEC serves in an advisory role with our institutions in NCAA compliance issues and the Conference Office will continue to assist LSU as it moves forward in this matter." No. 10 LSU is 25-5 and tied for first in the SEC with a 15-2 record. The Tigers host Vanderbilt on Saturday in their regular-season finale. Yahoo Sports first reported details about the contents of one of the telephone calls on Thursday. ESPN has independently verified the calls between Dawkins and Wade, which occurred in 2017, when the FBI was monitoring one of Dawkins' cellphones as part of the federal government's clandestine investigation into college basketball corruption. According to people familiar with the calls, Wade was frustrated with a handler of current LSU guard Javonte Smart, who was then a top-50 recruit from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. LSU is expected to make an announcement regarding the status of Smart ahead of the team's 8:30 p.m. tip-off against Vanderbilt on Saturday. "I was thinking last night on this Smart thing," Wade told Dawkins during one of the calls. "I'll be honest with you, I'm [expletive] tired of dealing with the thing. Like I'm just [expletive] sick of dealing with the [expletive]. Like, this should not be that [expletive] complicated. "Dude," Wade continued during the call, "I went to [the handler] with a [expletive] strong-ass offer about a month ago. [Expletive] strong. "The problem was, I know why he didn't take it now, it was [expletive] tilted toward the family a little bit. It was tilted toward taking care of the mom, taking care of the kid. Like it was tilted towards that. Now I know for a fact he didn't explain everything to the mom. I know now, he didn't get enough of the piece of the pie in the deal." "It was a [expletive] hell of a [expletive] offer," Wade continued. "Hell of an offer. ... Especially for a kid who is going to be a two- or three-year kid." In a different telephone call with Dawkins, Wade joked that the player would be compensated more than the "rookie minimum." Wade told Dawkins that he had made deals for "as good of players as him" that were "a lot simpler than this." ESPN's Mark Schlabach contributed to this report.<doc-sep>A mere decade ago, Will Wade was a 26-year-old assistant at Harvard, a good first full-time job for an aspiring basketball coach but hardly one that would guarantee long-term success in the business, much less an eventual multi-million dollar contract in the Southeastern Conference. In that sense, Wade was no different than thousands of other young coaches on staffs across college basketball who aspire to be the next John Calipari or Bill Self but understand both the long odds to get there and how the incentive structure works as an assistant in their profession. Get players, get promoted, make more money. Get players, get promoted, make more money. Get players, get promoted, make more money. LSU's decision to suspend Wade on Friday after explosive comments from an FBI wiretap were leaked to Yahoo Sports has drawn a predictable chorus of backlash from some corners based on the notion that because the NCAA’s amateurism rules are bad, Wade was justified in breaking them (if that’s what he did). If he cheated to get players, as the language Wade used in conversations with basketball hustler Christian Dawkins suggested, who’s actually getting hurt here? As that line of argument goes, at least the players are getting what they deserve, fans of the school are happy and, heck, isn’t everyone cheating anyway? But for all the hypocrisy and inequity within the NCAA rulebook, it is intellectually dishonest to suggest that a coach would pay players for any reason other than to enrich himself. If you take Wade’s own words from the wiretap about his wheeling and dealing at face value, he is not an unlucky martyr of a corrupt system. Rather, he is a grifter whose biggest talent was a brazen willingness to violate the rules that potentially stood between him and the millions upon millions of dollars LSU would give him if he won. In that sense, it’s hard to look at Wade much differently than many of his peers in the profession. And it’s why the NCAA, no matter what rules it puts in place or how many resources it devotes to enforcement, cannot fundamentally change the risk-reward calculation most coaches face. COACH SUSPENDED:LSU'S Will Wade indefinitely suspended amid FBI wiretap report OPINION:LSU should skip NCAA tournament and fire Will Wade The absolute worst thing that could happen to Will Wade right now is that his college coaching career will end in disgrace at age 36, having made $7.5 million over the last four years. If you could go back in time when Wade was a 23-year-old Clemson graduate assistant and offer him a choice between that career arc or taking a chance on doing it by the book, it’s hard to imagine he’d change a thing. That isn’t a knock on Wade’s character in a broader sense. He’s not a criminal, NCAA rules aren’t laws, and it’s hard to work up moral indignation about players and their families getting paid when the system artificially restricts their ability to trade on name, image and likeness rights. But Wade chose to make his living in this system, under these rules. And, in fact, it is the very nature of amateurism — i.e., athletic departments making millions of dollars from football and basketball without having to pay for the labor — that allows many coaches to make exorbitant salaries in the first place. In other words, it is impossible to remove the incentive to cheat when the ultimate reward is so great. When one Power Five coaching contract can set someone up for life, there is simply nothing threatening about the remote possibility of being caught. So if you’re Wade starting out in a brutal profession, how do you go from an anonymous assistant at an Ivy League school to winning an SEC regular-season title in the span of a decade? It’s not because you know more than your peers about how to draw up a good out-of-bounds play. Now, you can certainly argue Wade is a good basketball coach. But that doesn’t make him much different from hundreds of others who never got a Power Five job and the big payday that comes with it. It took Michigan’s John Beilein, who many regard as the best pure basketball coach in the sport, a decade of grinding through Division 3 and Division 2 jobs before he got a bottom-rung Division 1 job at Canisius just before his 40th birthday. That’s not to suggest the coaching profession comes with a moral imperative to work at small schools or pay dues in a way Wade never did. But it does illustrate that the way to rise quickly through the ranks is not to be regarded as a great tactician, but rather to recruit players above your program’s typical level, as Wade did every step along the way. At Harvard — yes, Harvard — he helped land recruiting classes that ranked in the top 25. That led him to VCU under Shaka Smart, where Wade helped recruit classes that were routinely considered among the best in the country for schools outside the power conferences. When he returned to VCU as head coach in 2015 to take over for Smart, he further brandished his credentials as a recruiter by securing a pledge from De’Riante Jenkins, a top-60 ranked player from South Carolina who could have gone to the SEC or ACC. Not everyone was impressed. Like many young coaches who make an early mark in recruiting, Wade’s rise drew whispered skepticism from his peers, a narrative that grew louder when he went to LSU and immediately landed guard Tremont Waters, the best player out of Connecticut. He has subsequently landed highly ranked players from New Jersey and Florida, an unusual feat for a program that made the NCAA tournament just twice since 2006. So unusual, in fact, that in February 2018 — long before Wade was ever connected to the FBI investigation — Yahoo Sports reported that the NCAA enforcement staff had spent six months trying to gather information on his recruiting tactics. Now we have Wade on wiretaps talking about a “strong-ass offer” and, according to ESPN, talking on another call with Dawkins about deals he had made for players in the past. Wade issued a statement Friday, saying the reported wiretap comments “do not begin to tell the full story” and asking people to withhold their judgment “until the record is complete.” We’ll see if Wade can exonerate himself. But if he can’t, if those words on the wiretaps represent how he did business, save your indignation about the rot of amateurism for the people who deserve it — not someone who cheated the system that allowed him to get rich in the first place.<doc-sep>
Photo : Sean Gardner ( Getty Images ) LSU suspended coach Will Wade on Friday in the wake of a report from Yahoo Sports that revealed Wade was caught on a wiretap speaking about making payments to current freshman guard Javonte Smart. In a phone conversation with Christian Dawkins—who was recently sentenced to six months in prison for wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy—the coach talked about the frustration of a third party not taking a strong offer to get Smart to commit to LSU. This was the portion of the conversation the report chose to highlight: “I was thinking last night on this Smart thing,” Wade said. “I’ll be honest with you, I’m [expletive] tired of dealing with the thing. Like I’m just [expletive] sick of dealing with the [expletive]. Like, this should not be that [expletive] complicated.”﻿ [...] “Dude,” Wade continued to Dawkins, referring to the third party involved in the recruitment, “I went to him with a [expletive] strong-ass offer about a month ago. [Expletive] strong. “The problem was, I know why he didn’t take it now, it was [expletive] tilted toward the family a little bit,” Wade continued. “It was tilted toward taking care of the mom, taking care of the kid. Like it was tilted towards that. Now I know for a fact he didn’t explain everything to the mom. I know now, he didn’t get enough of the piece of the pie in the deal.” Dawkins responded by saying, “Hmmmm.” “It was a [expletive] hell of a [expletive] offer,” Wade continued. “Hell of an offer.” “OK,” Dawkins said. “Especially for a kid who is going to be a two- or three-year kid,” Wade said. Nothing in that conversation mentioned anything about the offer’s specifics, or whether the offer was against any kind of NCAA policy. All that’s known from the transcript is that an offer existed. Nonetheless, LSU decided to take proactive steps to protect the program from the NCAA’s wildly inept hammer of justice and removed Wade from the program indefinitely. In a statement to NOLA.com, the coach expressed his understanding of why the school did what it had to do, but also tried to maintain an image of innocence on his part saying, “would ask everyone to withhold their judgment until the record is complete.” Any kind of judgment would most likely come not from the fact that he potentially had a hand in paying a player, but the fact that he vehemently denied having “done any business of any kind” with Dawkins back in October—which is also probably why LSU was quick with the suspension trigger. Perhaps the most annoying comment about this situation came from SEC president Greg Sankey who said in a statement, “I support the action of LSU in its suspension of head men’s basketball coach Will Wade. The information in recent news reports is very disturbing, if true.” Calling the act of player maybe receiving money for his basketball-playing abilities “disturbing” is complete and utter nonsense that’s a result of the posturing the NCAA’s absurd regulations force on these assholes. The only reason this whole case happened in the first place is because the draconian policies of the association creates a system where the players miss out on the compensation they’re owed so that those at the top can receive big salaries. There really wouldn’t be a fraud case otherwise. What makes the “disturbing” characterization even more bothersome is that when you look at the context of the transcripts, this topic only came up over the phone because too much of “the pie” Smart and his mother for the middle man’s liking. Above all else, the only information that was revealed in the reports was that something was vaguely offered, which has to make you wonder what other inconsequential events in Sankey’s life meet the very low threshold of what qualifies as “disturbing.” Because of all of that, a harmless action is no longer a victimless “crime.” A top-10 team has been screwed out of having their coach in arguably the most important point of the season. The Tigers now have to navigate the conference tournament, and the national tournament without the guy who helped take them to those heights in the first place—though the drive to win a title might be muted by the fact that there’s a more-than-likely chance that any titles won from here on out gets stripped away.