Will Wade's latest manuevers at LSU show the circus will follow wherever he coaches

No, it is not.

Will Wade's latest manuevers at LSU show the circus will follow wherever he coaches originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here . Did anyone really expect Will Wade would not act like a clown when he agreed to return to the circus that is LSU athletics?

We’ve seen how Wade operates when there are restraints in place. In 2023, coaching at McNeese State following his 2022 firing by LSU, he was suspended 10 games and presented a two-year show cause order by the Independent Accountability Resolution Process after the NCAA enforcement staff determined he had “arranged for, offered and/or provided impermissible payments, including cash payments, to at least 11 men's basketball prospective student-athletes, their family members, individuals associated with the prospects and/or non-scholastic coaches in exchange for the prospects' enrollment at LSU. " All of this followed Wade’s recorded comments on a federal wiretap, leaked in 2019, about the pursuit of a Louisiana basketball prospect.

His words have become enough a part of the lexicon the Apple TV program “Your Friends & Neighbors” is calling the chain of fitness centers owned by one of the lead characters “Nick’s Strong Ass Gym”. So now we have Wade in an athletic department featuring football coach Lane Kiffin, who walked away from an Ole Miss team still actively competing for the 2025 national title, and women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey, who stands out as the "normal" one despite her curious taste in fashion and, more to the point, public threat to sue the Washington Post even before a planned article about her in March 2024 was published. And Wade is working in a college athletics atmosphere in which so much is permissible regarding the gathering of talent, and so many of the boundaries that do exist appear malleable.