Published Mar 9, 2019
Joe Alleva and King Alexander shove Will Wade so he can walk the plank
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Ron Higgins  •  Death Valley Insider
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Every self-righteous sports columnist and commentator in America thinks LSU athletic director Joe Alleva and school president King Alexander are standup guys.

All of the deep-thinking scribblers and babbling broadcasters who called for Tigers’ basketball coach Will Wade’s head on a platter for allegedly being knee-deep in college basketball’s ever-growing recruiting scandal were placated Friday when he was indefinitely suspended by Alleva and Alexander.

And on the eve of No. 10 ranked LSU’s biggest game in years, a Saturday home date against Vanderbilt to clinch at least a piece of the SEC regular season championship just two years after the Tigers were 2-16 in league play.

Apparently, Alleva and Alexander made the decision after Wade refused their request to discuss Thursday’s Yahoo Sports story detailing a transcript of an FBI wiretap. It had Wade telling recruiting middleman Christian Dawkins on a cell phone call about a “strong-ass offer” Wade made in recruiting a prospect that appeared to be Tigers’ freshman signee Javonte Smart.

Read the quotes from the wiretap transcript and you immediately presume Wade is guilty.

Because he’s one of the youngest coaches in college basketball at age 36 in his second year of swimming with the Power 5 Conference recruiting sharks, perhaps Wade is not savvy enough yet to learn the filthy ins and outs of recruiting.

As they always say, it’s only cheating when you get caught. And if every coach who got nabbed for cheating in recruiting had to vacate his team's accomplishments and possible NCAA title, Murray State may one day be declared national champion.

It’s also expected that when you flip a program as quickly as Wade has with last year’s killer recruiting class, the NCAA is going to eyeball someone who allegedly has borrowed from fictional head college basketball coach Pete Bell’s recruiting playbook in the movie “Blue Chips.”

In the 1994 flick, Bell, a Bobby Knight-character portrayed by actor Nick Nolte, is desperate to return his program to glory. He reluctantly has sleazy boosters referred to as "Friends of the Program" buy the scholarship signatures of three stud recruits including center Neon Boudeaux played by Hall of Fame center and former LSU star Shaquille O’Neal.

In this case attached to Wade, Arizona coach Sean Miller and a yet-to-be-revealed list of other head coaches, the FBI is involved.

Apparently after about 40 years of athletic shoe companies buying recruits for college coaches whose programs connect to those companies through multi-million shoe and apparel contracts, somebody on a federal level finally decided it was time to halt the corrupt gravy train.

It's a long-train running that has taken the same route for decades. A college coach wants to sign a five-star, gotta-have-him recruit. He goes to the kid's AAU coach whose team is sponsored by adidas, NIke or maybe UnderArmour and gets the shoe company to buy the recruit by having it transfer money to the AAU program. Since the company and the AAU team already have a sponsorship deal, it can be written off as company sponsorship money.

The vagueness makes it hard to trace.

If it's been hard for the FBI to track down, just think how ridiculous it has been to think the NCAA, with its lack of investigative manpower and subpoena power, can actually catch these deals being made.

The NCAA is an organization reduced to a team of bumbling Inspector Clouseaus trying to enforce a bloated legislative manual full of nonsensical rules. They fail to govern an organization clinging to the notion that college sports on the highest money-grubbing levels remains based on the principles of amateurism.

It's long past the point where the NCAA's best bet of draining the swamp is finding smoking gun witnesses with vendettas. or having investigative reporters in the media do the footwork for them.

Or in this case there's FBI wiretaps, the most potent weapon yet to lay foundations for NCAA investigations.

It’s so scary that Alleva and Alexander, just as they did in the last few weeks of the 2015 college football season when it was leaked they wanted to fire LSU head football coach Les Miles, lost any remaining backbone they possessed.

The news that Miles might be fired created the same media firestorm that the Wade situation has sparked. National columnists torched the LSU administration, citing Miles as one of college football’s best coaches despite the Tigers’ continuous downhill slide since 2011.

Also at that time, there was the perception the state budget struggles affecting LSU would make the school look bad if it had to fire Miles and buy out his contract (though that money would have come from private funds).

So Alleva and Alexander frantically backpeddled like a cornerback beat on a deep route, just like they’re doing now with Wade.

True, they took action on Wade when he refused to meet with them. That was a mistake by Wade.

He should have honored the request and told Alleva and Alexander face-to-face with his legal counsel present that “on the advice of my counsel I am not discussing this matter with you, so go ahead, fold to the court of public opinion and presume my guilt with no confirmed evidence.”

That’s what Alleva and Alexander have done again, which is nothing but Deja poo.

They withered in the face of an outraged media, lost their guts. They made a decision based on presumption of guilt to save their rear ends rather than stick by their basketball coach who has molded a team of mostly new players into what has been one of college basketball’s best stories this season.

This team is what should be the emphasis tonight in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in the regular season finale.

Not Wade’s alleged illegal recruiting involvement, and certainly not a hair-trigger decision by the spineless duo of Alleva and Alexander to convict Wade of crimes in which he hasn’t yet had due process.

This 25-5 LSU team, 15-2 in the SEC and just one win away from at least a portion of the school’s 11th league regular season championship and clinching the No. 1 seed in next week’s league tournament, has given its heart and soul this year.

The fact it has a 5-2 record in seven overtimes this season is testament to a squad that will not rest until the final buzzer.

“It goes back to the type of guys who we have on this team, unselfish guys that come from great families that believe in something greater than themselves,” Tigers’ guard Skylar Mays said Thursday afternoon.

Mays and his teammates deserve every bit of energy and love that the PMAC sellout crowd can give them tonight.

As far as Wade, maybe he’ll be back for the SEC Tournament or the NCAA Tournament or maybe he’ll be proven guilty and the Tigers will be shopping for a coach again.

If there is any positive from the entire scope of the scandal as it eventually plays out, it might be something LSU fourth-year junior punter Zach Von Rosenberg posted to his Twitter account.

First, know that Von Rosenberg is a 28-year former minor league pitcher who spent six years chasing a dream and earning a salary before quitting and enrolling at LSU as a walk-on in 2016.

Unlike most college athletes, he understands and feels fortunate to have money in the bank. Such security, paired with his experience gained understanding sports as a business, led to his insightful tweet Friday night that said:

“Whether Will Wade is guilty or any coach for that matter I hope this brings about a larger conversation for getting collegiate athletes proper compensation. (No it doesn’t have to be direct pay for play) Instead set up Roth IRAs or pension plans that players can benefit from.”

Excellent idea, Zach.

Its only flaw is common sense and the NCAA rarely cross paths.