Who would have thought that one of college basketball’s biggest truth tellers would wind up being someone who was previously best known for recruiting and bribery violations? Only that’s exactly what’s happened with Will Wade, who has already become one of the unlikeliest faces of the 2025 NCAA Tournament.
For the uninitiated, Wade is the head coach of McNeese State — well, at least he is for now. Even before the 12th-seeded Cowboys’ first-round upset over No. 5 Clemson on Thursday, the former LSU head coach made headlines for doing the one thing you rarely see a college coach do: openly acknowledge that he has interest in another job.
Wade’s admission that he had already had discussions with North Carolina State about the Wolfpack’s head coaching vacancy figured to be a footnote ahead of his current school’s likely first-round loss and his even more inevitable relocation to Raleigh. But in the hours after the Cowboys’ upset of the Tigers, Wade’s mid-job job search took on a life of its own by way of an appearance The Field of 68’s postgame stream.
“We talked about it,” Wade told Jeff Goodman of his conversations with his team. “We were in practice when all that happened. You guys know. You interview for a job and then your attorneys deal with their attorneys. It’s not like I’m talking to people every day…. we had talked on Saturday. We’re honest.
“I mean, shoot, half the kids I recruited, I told them, ‘Hey, look the goal is to go Power 5 after this year and some of you guys can go with me.’ We all know what’s up. Our guys, this was great for them. They’ve got a lot of schools in their DMs too looking to pick them up and pay them.”
McNeese HC @wwademcneese gets asked about NC State by @GoodmanHoops on @TheFieldOf68 pic.twitter.com/kNfYmGQ4vN
— Inside Pack Sports (@InsidePackSport) March 20, 2025
Indeed, we all do know “what’s up,” even if coaches rarely acknowledge as much. And while Wade won’t officially become NC State’s coach until McNeese State’s March Madness run is over, the reports that he’s already accepted the job are already out there. Why pretend otherwise? To maintain some sort of facade that this multibillion dollar industry isn’t a business?
I get it, it’s not the best look — or perhaps more accurately, it’s not the look we became accustomed to in the pre-NIL/transfer portal era. But as Wade alluded to, he’s not the only person in the McNeese State locker room who’s already being recruited elsewhere.
Is that ideal? Perhaps not. But it’s also a reality of college sports’ current climate. And until that changes, every mid-major is going to face the same challenges each season with regard to both its coaches and players being poached.
If there’s a loser in all of this, it’s ostensibly McNeese State, which is still making money off of all of this via both the NCAA Tournament run and the newfound exposure brought by Wade’s uncommon honesty. And presumably, the athletic department knew exactly what it was signing up for when it hired Wade, who says he’s been transparent about his desire to return to a major program.
Ultimately, criticism from personalities like Charles Barkley — who has spent the better part of the past year openly discussing his own job status — was inevitable and would have been understandable in an era before the business of college sports was laid bare. The game, however, has now changed. Like Wade said, we all know what’s up.
