Good Riddance

On January 23rd, Will Wade sat in front of a microphone at the Pit Authentic Barbecue for his radio show. Unprompted, he said of the N.C. State job: “This is the best job I’ve ever had.”  

On March 16th, when asked about his coaching transition to N.C. State before leaving for the First Four, Wade said, unprompted,  "I've done this (transition) five times now, so you get a little bit used to it. I'm tired of doing it, so we don't want to do it anymore.”

Before he made either of these statements, Wade knew he wasn’t going to be here very long.

What makes a betrayal painful? It’s not the moment of double crossing. It’s all of the interactions along the way that built the trust and faith that made treason possible. Credit to Wade and his camp: they spun an incredible story. An incredible lie about a person who talks a big game when it’s easy, but will cower back to the comfort of an irrelevant program the first chance he can.

Wade arrived in Raleigh declaring in a faux humble fashion that State was getting  “the best version of himself.” That after leaving VCU in a firestorm and getting into FBI-investigation-deep trouble at LSU, he had to reflect and grow as a person. 

He took his punishment, won at McNeese quickly, and then paraded his open communication with N.C. State regarding last year’s opening like it was a Nobel Peace Prize. Wade carefully built an image of a reformed person ready to plant roots and build something for the long haul. 

This Will Wade 2.0 came to Raleigh understanding who N.C. State was, and what it wanted. He saw us. He spoke words that told this fan base he knew what he was getting into, what it meant to be part of a program that had once competed at the top, with a real hunger to return to the pinnacle of the sport. He claimed to understand the dynamics of the triangle, the legacy of the giants who have walked here before, and spoke of a desire to join them.

Wade used that understanding - and the false caricature of himself he was building - to prey on this university and its people. He used it as an insurance policy. A place to collect a pay check in a power 4 conference while Matt McMahon inevitably floundered so he could return, in his words yesterday, “home.” When a reporter asked him two weeks ago if he was considering the LSU job, his response started with “Is that job open? No? Listen, let me be very clear: I’m excited at NC State.”

The jokes write themselves: The job still wasn’t open as he boarded a plane on Thursday to flee Raleigh for good (Poor Matt McMahon in all of this.) 

The level of scumbaggery Wade exhibited here can’t be understated. This move has been in the works dating back to LSU’s hiring of Wade Rousse on November 4th, the former McNeese administrator who hired Will there. Hell, it likely predated that: It’s rumored that Wade was taking NIL from LSU boosters throughout his time in Raleigh. 

Overlay these details with State’s 2-8 finish to the season, punctuated by Wade throwing players under the bus and constantly talking down about who he has on his roster. That dip in performance correlated not only with an uptick in competition, but rumors that the players started hearing about Wade’s departure in early February as well. Is it a coincidence that Wade's old Baton Rouge house was marked "pending" on ZIllow on February 23rd? Wade was literally throwing stones from a glass house.

Then you can add in this week’s saga. I won’t present a full timeline to you here, but the high points for me were Wade lying to Boo Corrigan’s face about wanting to return on Tuesday, the no showing of a Wednesday meeting with Boo, topped off with an email resignation and an AI generated goodbye letter to “North Carolina State University.” This dude is a hack. He hasn’t changed at all. 

Certainly I’m bitter because I fell for the act. I’m bitter because this is THE program in my world that I cheer for, being harmed in the process. I'm certainly bitter at the hubris of Wade posing as the most important figure in N.C. State sports history without having done a damn thing. I'm not sure who to credit for this, but this amended version is much more appropriate:

Let me be very clear: this is the behavior of a master manipulator devoid of a moral code. This is a loser.

Over a long enough time horizon, I believe people who exhibit such manipulative and dishonest behavior get what is coming to them. I’m not interested in having someone run this program whose values and ethics are below board. For a bottom dwelling program like LSU who believes they can throw money at every single problem they have - and maybe they can - good luck.

This one is going to sting for a while, especially if we see this coaching search get off the rails. But I can confidently say with this full picture of Will Wade behind us: I am glad he is gone. He doesn’t deserve this program, or this fan base.

Retreating to the shadow of the bayou where he can hide behind Football and Baseball and Women’s Basketball aligns with exactly the kind of person and coach he is: a person who claims he was ready for the biggest stage in the sport, but couldn't handle being in the heart of basketball country for more than a single season.

The bedrock of this program is resilience. It’s surviving and advancing. It isn’t for soft people. This program will be back and it will be better because of this moment - maybe not this year, but it’s coming. We're going to get ours, and we're going to do it without a massive scumbag at the helm.