Will Wade to NC State caps college sports' decade of change, plus Stanford fires Taylor

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One piece of breaking news from moments ago: Stanford general manager Andrew Luck just announced the firing of two-year head coach Troy Taylor following investigations into hostile behavior.

More to come.

As for today: In college sports, the 2010s began with Cam Newton filling the role of public enemy No.

1.

What was his charge? When hed been a top-tier JUCO prospect, his father had allegedly solicited six figures from Mississippi State before the eventual Heisman winner signed with Auburn.

Lots of neutral fans and media members were so mad about that potential breach of the NCAAs ideals, they missed out on enjoying one of the most entertaining championship teams ever.

Advertisement For the rest of that decade, though, there was a real sense that people began caring less and less about each amateurism dustup, each revelation that Todd Gurley or Johnny Manziel had made a few bucks from autographs.

The NCAAs presumed moral authority, accumulated bit by bit over the previous century, was melting away in real time all over social media.

Near the end of those 2010s, Yahoo Sports reported right before 2019s NCAA Tournament that a 2017 FBI wiretap had caught LSU mens basketball coach Will Wade describing a strong-ass offer made toward a recruit.

By that point, it took a spectacular detail like FBI wiretap for an amateurism adventure to register as a legitimately big deal.

But it also felt like further proof that the NCAAs situation was beyond untenable, like the bespectacled sheriff from Indianapolis was about to stop admiring his billion-dollar March Madness contract long enough to saddle up for one last job.

Now zoom ahead a little and pretend its July 1, 2021.

Thatd be pretty nice, right? I actually remember the weather was great that day, for one thing.

Mainly, that was the day when college sports NIL era officially began.

Here were two of the things happening at the same power-conference school: Simultaneous! LSU: always surreal! (We were operating at maximum bayou chaos, sure, but it was nothing shocking, says Pulse newsletter author and mayhem-accustomed Tigers fan Chris Branch.

That might be a bad thing.) The school would fire Wade a year later, once the NCAA thing finally wrapped up.

OK, now skip ahead to this past week.

Wade, in his second year as the head coach at Louisianas McNeese State, had the Cowboys in back-to-back NCAA tourneys for the first time in program history.

And they might have been the most definitively 2020s college team: Minutes ago, Wade arrived as NC States new head coach, announcing from the podium, Next year, were going to the NCAA Tournament.

Make sure you got that on camera.

For a brief moment, the amateurism era overlapped with the NIL era, and then The FBI Wiretap Coach needed just three years to regain a power-conference job.

Aura is evaluating whether to follow him to Raleigh.

What a time.

Two former Michigan athletes a gymnast and womens soccer player sued the school and 2022 Wolverines offensive coordinator Matt Weiss over allegations that he accessed intimate photos by hacking their accounts.

More here .

Notes as spring ball really gets going: At next months NFL Draft, I wouldnt be stunned if Ole Miss Jaxson Dart becomes the third first-round QB (after Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders).

Film guru Ted Nguyen says the 21-year-old could have the highest ceiling of any quarterback in the draft, with big caveats.

Last week, the Drake Bulldogs upset No.

6 Missouri in the mens tournament.

Drakes coach, Ben McCollum, had previously been a Division II behemoth, winning all four hoops national titles in Northwest Missouri States history plus entering 2020s canceled tournament as the No.

1 seed.

Despite that eye-popping record, McCollum faced instant pushback upon entering DI : Soon, he was flooded with messages from a group text thread of his best friends, sharing social media posts doubting McCollum.

The most common theme: Why was McCollum bringing his Division II players four of them! with him to Drake? Weve got some receipts, McCollum said.

I think thats what all competitors do.

I just think they like to be doubted.

It forces them to trust themselves even more, immerse themselves even more to the D-II Drake deal.

McCollums players followed without hesitation.

They knew they would win because thats simply all theyve known.

(Iowa has since hired McCollum , and this time, nobody is complaining about the proportion of his wins that have involved directional schools.) That happens all the time in football, too.

Remember the outcry when Kansas State hired four-time North Dakota State champion Chris Klieman, whos since won both a Big 12 title and the sports highest prize (a Pop-Tarts corpse)? When Ohio State hired Youngstown States dynastic Jim Tressel, then won a BCS title? You could also count other FCS-to-FBS winners like Curt Cignetti, Jim Harbaugh and like it or not Deion Sanders, along with former Division III juggernaut Lance Leipold.

It doesnt always work, but nothing always works.

Advertisement Im not a very smart person, so I tend to evaluate coaching hires by first looking at their win-loss records as college coaches.

If it looks good, I dont worry much about the level.

If you can get 11 guys to beat 11 equally sized guys, you can probably keep doing that as both your guys and their guys get larger.

This is a double-edged thing, because treating lower levels of college football as truly valid would also lead to more FBS teams poaching from those schools.

I think theres still a trade-off, though.

More people know of Youngstown because of Tressels Ohio State run than because of what he actually did as a Penguin.

Now if we could just learn to appreciate small-school winners while theyre actually at small schools.

Drake University: [image or embed] Gravy Crockett ( @bostonjerry.bsky.social ) March 20, 2025 at 10:04 PM Love Until Saturday? Check out The Athletic s other newsletters .

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(Top photo: Maddie Meyer/Getty Images).

This article has been shared from the original article on theathleticuk, here is the link to the original article:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6230057/2025/03/25/will-wade-nc-state-hired-until-saturday/