Free Will Wade

It’s the whole charade of this that I just can’t take anymore. A college basketball coach is caught arranging payments to a player. The university acts Very Concerned, everybody in the media writes their little piece about it, and then we go on to the next one, and everybody acts surprised all over again.

It’s like pulling a coin out of a baby’s ear. Always gets a reaction.

LSU has suspended basketball coach Will Wade indefinitely — indefinitely? — because he got caught on an FBI wiretap with Christian Dawkins, and it sounded an awful lot like they were negotiating prices and setting up payments. Stories like this have been popping up all over college basketball for the last two years, implicating multiple Hall of Fame coaches in brazen schemes to direct money to players in exchange for their services. There isn’t much doubt anymore about the way business is done in college basketball, which because of NCAA amateurism rules is a black market.

LSU is trying to cover its own butt with the NCAA. I’ve written before why that’s the wrong idea,  and I don’t expect it will help LSU in this case. Recent indicators are that the NCAA is on the warpath. It’s been trying in court to get access to the FBI’s evidence and generally seems to be flexing its power.

Jerking Will Wade around for a couple of weeks isn’t going to help.

The punishment doesn’t even make sense for what Wade is accused of doing. This isn’t like holding out a possibly ineligible player so you won’t get wins taken away from you. If Wade broke the rules in assembling this team, that’s going to be true whether or not he coaches the rest of LSU’s games this year. So you’re holding him out “indefinitely.” Pending what, exactly? The outcome of a trial? The completion of an NCAA investigation? You’re going to be waiting years.

You’ve heard what you’ve heard on the tape. Either you’re OK with having Will Wade coach your basketball team, in which case he should be out there doing that, or you aren’t, in which case you’ve got to fire him.

I don’t think anybody at LSU really wants to do that, nor should they. LSU has one of the best young coaches in college basketball, and it should fight for him.

There is a defense to be made here.

Federal judges are slowly, but reliably, chipping away at limitations on what college athletes can receive in compensation. The most significant of those rulings was certain amateurism rules violated federal antitrust law.

"In the ruling in Federal District Court in Oakland, Calif., Judge Claudia Wilken determined that amateurism rules barring payment beyond scholarships and certain related costs of education violate antitrust law."

College basketball coaches are caught between two moral imperatives.  Over one shoulder is the noble idea of playing by the rules of NCAA basketball and on the other shoulder is noble idea of playing by the rules of America, where people are paid for their work.

If you keep putting coaches and players in the position you’ve been putting them in for the last 40 years — which is to say, an artificially suppressed market — you will keep getting these results. It does nobody any good to pretend like Will Wade is some sort of shocking deviant. The sport has an endless and constantly regenerating supply of this.

So free Will Wade. Free everybody. If they’re saying they’re going to take down all the cheaters in college basketball, make them really do it. Then see what happens to NCAA Tournament ratings.