A Will Wade-LSU reunion was ‘in the works’ for months, and everyone but NC State saw it coming

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A little more than a year ago, Will Wade was being lauded for his candor.

He was head coach of McNeese, about to play a first-round NCAA Tournament game in Providence, R.I., against Clemson — a game his team would go on to win. While he didn’t come straight out and say that he was leaving the Southland Conference school for NC State of the ACC after the Cowboys’ season ended, it was apparent that everyone involved was aware of what was going on and cool with it.

McNeese was winning. NC State was making a splashy hire. Wade, fired by LSU for NCAA rules violations in 2022, was getting another shot at a big-time job.

“We addressed it head-on,” Wade said at the time of his talk with his players and bosses. “We’re all on the same page with everything.”

Wade, 43, is once again on the move and stealing the spotlight away from March Madness, but this time around not everybody is having fun.

After one season under Wade, NC State is back in the market for a head coach as he returns to LSU, where he will reunite with the university president and athletic director he worked for at McNeese. A deal that had been brewing behind the scenes for months came together on Thursday.

“We don’t want to be a stepping stone on the way to another job,” NC State athletic director Boo Corrigan said Thursday.

That’s the way it turned out.

The Wolfpack paid Wade $2.5 million, gave him $11 million to build a roster and got 20 victories, 14 losses, a resignation from Wade, delivered via email by his agent and a social media post saying goodbye.

LSU is getting back the most successful men’s basketball coach it has had in the last 20 years — a fairly low bar for a program that made two NCAA appearances in 10 years before Wade was first hired by the school — with another audacious, high-profile and high-priced hire of a guy who blew up all the bridges on his way out of his last job.

In Baton Rouge, Wade joins Lane Kiffin, who landed at LSU after a messy divorce with Ole Miss. Kiffin bailed on the College Football Playoff-bound Rebels a couple of days after the regular season ended. Kiffin got a seven-year contract worth $91 million to relocate within the SEC, along with a promise of $25 million to build this year’s Tigers roster.

Wade, who was 105-51 in five seasons at LSU, won’t be getting that much, but he’s still receiving a seven-year deal with a salary bump to $4 million, according to the term sheet he signed with the Tigers. Additionally, a person close to Wade told The Athletic that LSU has committed to spending at least $12 million to $15 million — between revenue-sharing and NIL — on player payroll. LSU is also on the hook for $8 million to Matt McMahon, the coach Wade will replace.

That’s roughly one-seventh of what LSU owes Kiffin’s predecessor. Brian Kelly’s firing in late October and the financial fallout of his $54 million buyout triggered the governor of Louisiana to call out the state’s flagship school, its leadership and all of college athletics for reckless spending.

“My role is about the fiscal effect of firing a coach under a terrible contract,” Gov. Jeff Landry said then.

Scott Woodward, the athletic director who gave Kelly that contract, was let go days later. He was owed $6 million on the way out.

Money’s not an issue at LSU, two people with ties to the school emphasized to The Athletic.

Woodward’s reputation in the industry, for better or worse, was as a big-game hunter who liked to make home-run hires. A few months before luring Kelly away from Notre Dame, he hired Kim Mulkey to lead LSU women’s basketball. She came from Baylor with three national titles and added another with the Tigers. She is in the middle of a 10-year, $36 million deal.

Woodward is gone, but LSU is still aiming high, first with Kiffin and now with Wade, though the latter has been on LSU’s radar every bit as long — if not longer.

Multiple people briefed on the situation said LSU was interested in bringing back Wade last year after McMahon completed a third lackluster season with the Tigers. But the financial ramifications of firing McMahon at that point were too steep, and Wade didn’t have as much internal support at LSU.

That changed substantially on Nov. 4 when former McNeese president Wade Rousse was appointed president of LSU. On Thursday, Rousse named Heath Schroyer, formerly the athletic director at McNeese who hired Wade, senior deputy athletic director at LSU.

“This has all been in the works,” a person close to Wade told The Athletic. During the ACC tournament, Wade denied interest in what at the time was a potential LSU opening.

One of the people with deep LSU ties who is also close to Wade told The Athletic that discussions about Wade coming back to Baton Rouge go back to last summer, when Rousse was just a potential candidate for a vacant presidency.

The person said Schroyer’s role will be to oversee Wade’s program and baseball, leaving AD Verge Ausberry to focus on Kiffin and football. Schroyer is a former basketball coach, including a stint as head coach at McNeese before taking over as AD.

The person also said Wade is set to bring new donors to LSU basketball with whom he had built relationships at McNeese.

The irony of Wade’s move causing such a stir this year is that he is coming off a so-so debut with NC State. After an 18-6 start, the Wolfpack lost eight of their last 10 games, including a loss in the First Four to Texas.

“We’ve got a lot of things we’ve got to reset for next year,” Wade said after the loss in Dayton, Ohio. “We didn’t have the year we wanted to have. We’ve got a lot of things that we need to make sure that we’re in better shape for moving forward.”

Between his baggage and a mediocre first season in Raleigh, Wade didn’t appear to be such a hot commodity.

According to the first person close to Wade, he went to Corrigan after the season seeking a raise, more money for assistant coaches and an increase in NIL funds. Either unaware of LSU’s interest or unconcerned by it, Corrigan declined to renegotiate Wade’s contract.

“He is culpable in some respects,” the person said of Corrigan.

Corrigan pushed back on the idea that he stood idly by as LSU stole his basketball coach. He said he asked Wade if they needed to talk about potential interest in LSU.

“And the answer was no,” Corrigan said.

Corrigan said he and Wade had a two-hour meeting Tuesday night to talk about scheduling, the roster, the staff and “What do we need to be competitive?”

“I believed he was telling me his true intentions,” Corrigan said. “I’m disappointed for our athletic department, I’m disappointed for our fans, and I’m disappointed for our university that we’re here today.”

NC State will get $4 million for Wade’s departure. His $5 million buyout would have dropped to $3 million on April 2, but NC State decided it was worth $1 million to move things along. If that figure seems small for a coach whose exit seemed at least somewhat predictable, Corrigan defended it as the product of an initial negotiation that gave Wade a $2.5 million salary that was probably below market value.

Whether Wade or his new employer covers that $4 million is unknown, but by all accounts he and LSU have been pining for each other for about a year. It was just a matter of time before their second marriage.