The utter ridiculousness of Will Wade returning to LSU means that its athletic department will boast the most unlikable, objectionable, insufferable trio to occupy football and basketball head coaching jobs under the same roof.
That’s where Thursday morning text threads went immediately after news broke that LSU is bringing Wade back — after a single, underwhelming season for him at NC State, after LSU fired him in March 2022, after all the FBI wiretaps and NCAA violations and sloppy cheating that created middling success. That’s enough cringe on its own. But what about Wade joining an organization that also employs Lane Kiffin and Kim Mulkey?
My word, what a trio. Can you imagine the summer coaching caravan with these three, going town to town in Louisiana to meet the fans? It may be the first required by the NCAA to have an exorcist on hand.
This trio needs a nickname. Someone texted Unholy Trinity. Not bad. I threw out Triple Biotic. Leave your favorite in the comments. Just be fair and don’t lump them together on all matters.
One of them, Mulkey, is a proven winner, an elite coach who won a national championship at LSU three years ago and previously won three at Baylor. Of the three, if these coaches were children of and potential successors to Don Corleone, she’d be Michael. She can lead an organization to the top.
The primary criticisms of Mulkey have to do with — here’s that term again — utterly ridiculous things she has said in public, such as about sexual assault survivors at Baylor and COVID-19. She had nothing to say about former Baylor star Brittney Griner’s detainment in Russia. But Griner told ESPN that when she played at Baylor, Mulkey told her to keep her sexuality private so as not to hurt recruiting.
These haven’t been fireable transgressions, not when you win as Mulkey wins. They just add up with her default sideline behavior to give basically everyone but LSU fans an obvious villain in her sport. And that’s exactly what Kiffin has become in football.
The LSU mascot channeled its inner Kim Mulkey with the Final Four outfit. pic.twitter.com/pprKbSRAOr
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) April 1, 2023
The difference is, Kiffin is a lot more noise than substance. Think Sonny Corleone. Remember all that self-serving “changed man” bluster? Kiffin is a good coach. He deserves credit for building Ole Miss into a College Football Playoff participant, even if the current landscape makes that possible at basically any Power 4 program willing to invest in winning.
He earned that and the LSU opportunity. He also earned the permanent scorn of all non-LSU fans for choosing this path of least resistance over actually trying to win a national championship with the Rebels, and for his childish attempts to keep coaching during the transition.
The entire saga, including Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry disavowing predecessor Brian Kelly’s contract and massive buyout and then clapping like a seal as LSU gave Kiffin the world, means Kiffin will be side-eyed for the rest of his career. It also means he needs to win it all. And soon. Coaching chops of that degree are theoretical until he actually puts them on display.
But what in the world has Wade done for LSU to manage to retrieve its purchased soul and sell it again?
Forget about his behavior, including that with his own LSU superiors, when the FBI and NCAA pinned him down on transgressions that were far from “strong-ass” in their professionalism. He could have looked around his own league for tips on discretion. No one cares about such things in the NIL era, but the recklessness and relative lack of scruples at the time should still serve as commentary on Wade with some shelf life.
Wade has built winning teams at Chattanooga, VCU, LSU and McNeese. LSU’s new president is Wade Rousse, who was formerly at McNeese, and former McNeese AD Heath Schroyer was named on Thursday afternoon as a senior deputy AD and will oversee the LSU basketball program. They’ve seen that Wade can coach.
His best work has been done amid the absence of expectations and scrutiny, though. The peak was getting LSU to the Sweet 16 in 2019, at a time when any success from Wade was going to be celebrated in Baton Rouge. Also, at a time when he was doing extra to acquire talent, presumably giving him an edge he won’t enjoy anymore.
Wade arrived at NC State a year ago with bluster that would make Kiffin blush, got the funding to lure key players away from other established teams (Darrion Williams from Texas Tech, Tre Holloman from Michigan State) and went 20-14, fading with eight losses in 10 games to nearly miss an NCAA Tournament bid. NC State bowed out in the Round of 64, ending a disappointing debut season that had its share of embarrassments along the way.
Among them were Wade’s outbursts toward reporters at different times in response to reasonable questions. Culminating with quite a performance on his deep belief in the NC State job, before slinking off to a former home that will now expect much more than he’s ever done as a coach.
At least Fredo Corleone was likable.
