On March 25, 2025, Will Wade posed beside a statue of Jim Valvano outside Reynolds Coliseum, endearing himself to NC State fans and cultivating a renewed enthusiasm that Wolfpackers had only felt in spurts over the previous three decades.
On March 26, 2026, NC State was without a coach, and Wade was cleared for takeoff. A fan base that bought in, again, had the rug pulled out after a year of unfulfilled promises.
After a wild few days in the Triangle, know this: This is the behavior the new college sports apparatus fully endorses. Royalties over loyalties. Opportunity over principle.
“This is the day and age that we’re in, right?” said NC State director of athletics Boo Corrigan on Thursday. “People that want to move and people that are looking for something else — a bigger, better deal, if you will — at all times.”
So now NC State is back in the same pond as UNC and a host of other programs searching for a new head coach and stability in a system that doesn’t reward it.
Wade, a Bayou backstabber of sorts, has woven a tangled web, swindling NC State, the Triangle, the ACC, Raleigh and other stakeholders. That same outsized personality revealed itself as hubris. It’s another few inches of the veil being raised — the quiet part being said out loud.
The phrase “the landscape of college sports is changing” has been said roughly every day for the last five years. Of course it’s true.
Some fans have reached their breaking point. Any principled, institutionalized reverence for the culture that college sports once facilitated and promoted is waning, as more decisions feel transactional. Characters like Wade are fully backed by this arrangement.
The fact is, college sports are covered like pro sports, presented like pro sports, consumed like pro sports. Fans are charged for a pro sports experience.
Players come from all over the country — and sometimes other parts of the world. Logos are on the court and field. Teams are flying across the country to compete, and conferences branch into areas that barely resemble their original footprint.
Many have come to expect pro-like performances, even from freshmen and transfer players still acclimating to new environments.
The attachment to players — and coaches, as we’ve learned in the last week — needs to be adjusted.
It’s undermining a university’s main mission.
“Our mission of service, teaching and research to the state and its people is obviously the most important thing that we do, but athletics is the most visible,” said UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee Roberts on Thursday. “It’s been that way for a long time.”
Roberts says that knowing full well his handling of the men’s basketball coaching hire — and the decision around the Tar Heels’ next basketball arena — will shape his reputation with many.
This isn’t a naive, Pollyannaish outlook. Many Americans have moved away from their families and cherished relationships for a bigger salary, a bigger house and upward mobility over the last 50 years. Look no further than the Triangle, where many have arrived in recent decades to enjoy our universities, amenities, weather and overall quality of life.
The cost of this aggressive pursuit of progress is clear: families separate, relationships sever, social bonds deteriorate, trust erodes, self-centeredness grows and apathy spreads.
This problem isn’t exclusive to college sports. Or sports. Or entertainment. Or journalism. It’s not going anywhere.
The way this move unfolded underscores the shift. At NC State, they’ll get another coach and move on, but this moment lands differently.
Louisiana’s governor publicly pushed to bring Wade back to LSU. That’s the level of investment — political, financial, cultural — now tied to these decisions.
LSU leans into it, embracing larger-than-life personalities like Lane Kiffin, Kim Mulkey and now Wade.
It’s bold. It’s unapologetic. And, of course, it’s well-funded.
And it’s the direction everything is heading.
