Jay Bilas rips NCAA for double standard on coach movement, player tampering amid Will Wade move

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After one season at NC State, Will Wade officially returned to Baton Rouge this week as LSU announced him as its next head coach. The news broke before Matt McMahon was informed of his dismissal, On3’s Pete Nakosreported, and ESPN’s Jay Bilas had strong thoughts about the broader conversation about the situation.

Wade was previously at LSU from 2017-22 before his firing amid an NCAA investigation into alleged recruiting violations. Now, after just one season at NC State and a First Four appearance in the NCAA Tournament, he’s heading back to Baton Rouge. But as the situation came together, McMahon’s future remained in question, considering his $8 million buyout.

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All the while, Bilas noted the efforts on Capitol Hill to grant the NCAA an antitrust exemption amid concerns about tampering with players and attempts to get them to transfer. He sees differences in the conversation about coaches who leave for other jobs.

“What we have in this industry – and look, this is business as usual,” Bilas said Saturday on College GameDay. “This is not necessarily about Will Wade. It’s about the business, period. Coaches and administrators like to complain about tampering with players. But we never hear that with coaches. These coaches are under contract, and other member institutions are basically tampering with them and tortiously interfering with their contractual relationship with their school with no repercussions. Everybody is good with it because, you take my coach, I’ll to take somebody else’s. And the ripple effect goes through the whole industry. I don’t think it’s right.

“Then, right now, you have administrators from the NCAA and conference commissioners, and the like, up on Capitol Hill begging Congress for an antitrust exemption so they can limit the players. They say what the players are making is unsustainable. They’re never saying ‘unsustainable’ about … $75 million-plus in buyouts and all this other stuff. Nobody’s saying anything about that.”

All told, LSU spent nearly $75 million on buyouts for McMahon, former football coach Brian Kelly and former athletics director Scott Woodward. That’s on top of the amount spend on football with Kelly’s firing and Lane Kiffin’s hiring, taking the total bill of more than $200 million.

Bilas argued that schools can find ways to make coaching changes if they see fit, even if it means targeting a coach who’s under contract. But amid conversations on Capitol Hill about tampering, he considered it a double standard with how player movement is discussed.

“There’s plenty of money when they want to make a coaching change,” Bilas said. “But when the players get something – and they’re still restricted – and, boy, we’ve got a problem with that. We’ve got to go to Capitol Hill. If they were up on Capitol Hill saying, ‘We need to rein in coaches’ salaries and we need to stop all this tampering with other coaches and firings,’ and all that stuff?”

Jay Bilas: Schools should ask permission to talk with coaches

As for a solution to avoid situations like Wade’s departure, Jay Bilas called for a notable change. He argued schools should have to ask permission before talking with another coach, similar to the rules in place in the NFL in NBA. He used the example of Boston College’s decision to hire UConn assistant Luke Murray, rather than someone else’s head coach.

“They don’t do that in the NFL and the NBA. You can’t go do that,” Bilas said. “There are rules against it. … While presidents are out there waving their finger at everybody talking about values and integrity, they don’t show any. They’re taking another president’s coach, who had signed that coach to a contract. Will Wade – look, he’s not the only one. Will Wade wasn’t even there a calendar year and he’s gone, and signed a multi-year contract and been dealing getting more resources for next year and all that stuff, and left skid marks on that place.

“I’m not trying to cast aspersions on one coach. Darian DeVries was at Drake, West Virginia and Indiana in one year. It’s business as usual. But we need to stop clutching our pearls with regard the players if we’re not going to say anything about this.”

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