They say if you truly love someone to let them go, and if they come back they're truly yours. Even if you have to push your current partner out the door to make the reunion happen. Okay, they don't say that last part.
After LSU was forced to fire men's basketball coach Will Wade back in 2022 for doing something that is now legal -- both in the FBI sense and the NCAA sense -- the Tigers officially brought him back home on Thursday. The Tigers' pursuit of Wade was as clumsy as it gets. It unofficially started back in November, when LSU hired McNeese president Wade Rousse; Rousse hired Wade at McNeese after a year in college basketball exile, and Wade rewarded that decision by going 50-9 with two NCAA tournament bids, and a first-round upset of Clemson. So what if going back to LSU meant Wade had to leave NC State after just one season, and Matt McMahon had to twist in the wind throughout the entire season? LSU got their guy.
LSU bringing Wade home made one thing abundantly clear: no one's doing it quite like LSU right now. Look at it this way: Kim Mulkey is somehow the third-biggest lightning rod on the Tigers' head coaching roster.
To underscore that point, let's examine how much LSU is spending right now, just on head coaches.
FOOTBALL
Former AD Scott Woodward pulled off a coup in luring Brian Kelly away from Notre Dame -- with the Irish ranked No. 6 and theoretically alive to make the College Football Playoff, mind you -- with an eye-popping 10-year, $95 million contract. Kelly left Notre Dame for LSU under the belief he'd taken the Irish as far as they could go, and needed the juice LSU provided to finally win an elusive national championship. If Les Miles and Ed Orgeron could get it done at LSU, how hard could it be?
One problem: reality. Notre Dame was back in the title game within three seasons of Kelly's departure, and LSU never seriously contended in Kelly's four seasons on the job. By October of last year, he was out at a price tag of $54 million.
Enter Lane Kiffin, pried away from Ole Miss during the Rebels' Playoff run at an even richer annual rate: $91 million over seven years. He even earned $500,000 for an Ole Miss playoff run he watched on his couch. LSU also had to pay $5 million to get Kiffin out of Ole Miss, sources tell FootballScoop. (The price karma will extract for the timing and nature of LSU's plucking of Kiffin away from a conference rival in the midst of a national title run remains to be seen.) Unlike Kelly's contract with LSU, Kiffin has no duty to mitigate and his buyout would not be offset by future salaries if LSU fires him without cause. Kiffin is percentage points behind Georgia's Kirby Smart and Indiana's Curt Cignetti for the highest-paid coach in college football, but his contract dictates a one-time escalator to make him the game's highest coach if/when he delivers the Tigers' fourth national championship of the 21st century. Written between the lines on that contract, LSU will fire Kiffin if/when he fails to deliver that title.
We're sticking just to head coaches here, but defensive coordinator Blake Baker turned down offers elsewhere to sign a 3-year, $9.3 million contract with a fourth-year option at $3.5 million. Offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, Jr., signed a 3-year, $7.5 million deal.
MEN'S BASKETBALL
LSU will pay McMahon $8 million to go away, which is a lot of money, and doubly a lot for a fourth-year coach who never even seriously contended for an NCAA bid (which was largely Wade's fault due to the wreckage he left behind). And as much as Wade victimized McMahon here, he also owes him a thank you on his way out the door. Because of the instability brought about by Wade's firing, LSU had to give McMahon a 7-year, $20 million contract to leave Murray State.
Wade's buyout to get out of NC State after just one year is $5 million today, and drops to $3 million if the Tigers can draw this out until April 2, next Thursday. We don't have Wade's official contract details yet, but his contract is expected to be in the $30 million range at $5 million per year, which is on the lower-half of SEC coaches but double the salary Wade commanded when he first took the job nine years ago.
WOMEN'S BASKETBALL
LSU stunned the women's basketball world when the Tigers hired 3-time national champion Kim Mulkey away from Baylor in 2021, and in her second year she delivered the university's first basketball title of any kind. Afterward, she signed a 10-year, $36 million contract, making her the highest-paid coach in the sport. (South Carolina's Dawn Staley has since surpassed Mulkey in average annual value, but Mulkey's contract is still the largest in total dollars committed.)
Since winning the title, Mulkey has been to two Elite Eights and has this year's team back in the Sweet 16 as of this writing.
BASEBALL
After delivering the seventh (2023) and eighth (2025) national titles in LSU baseball history -- all won since 1991 -- the Tigers extended Johnson last September. The 7-year, $23 million contract entrenches Johnson as the highest-paid coach in college baseball, particularly with Tony Vitello out of the picture at Tennessee. Johnson is roughly half a million north of Texas's Jim Schlossnagle, LSU's biggest rival for baseball spending.
The defending national champions are, ahem, unranked and off to a 2-4 start to SEC play.
OTHER SPORTS
LSU helpfully publishes the head coaching contracts for its 14 other teams, coached by 11 men and women (Dennis Shaver essentially quadruple dips as the head coach of the men's and women's cross country and track & field teams). I don't have figures to contextualize where they stand among other Olympic sports coaches, but all told I have the figure at just north of $16 million committed. Or, the cost of one above-expectation LSU football season on Lane Kiffin's contract.
-- Dennis Shaver, cross country/track & field: 6 years, $4.325 million
-- Jay Clark, gymnastics: 7 years, $3.08 million
-- Beth Torina, softball: 5 years, $2.25 million
-- Jake Amos, men's golf: 5 years, $1.5 million
-- Garrett Runion, women's golf: 5 years, $1.325 million
-- Tonya Johnson, volleyball: 5 years, $1.3 million
-- Sian Hudson, soccer: 4 years, $1.14 million
-- Taylor Fogleman, women's tennis: 5 years, $1 million
-- Danny Bryan, men's tennis: 5 years, $775,000
-- Rick Bishop, swimming & diving: 4 years, $720,000
-- Russell Brock, beach volleyball: 5 years, $600,000
Add it all up, and you have nearly $270 million committed, just to LSU's current (and some former) head coaches. And that doesn't touch assistant coaches, support staff, or administration. And that doesn't touch the players, who are expected to earn in the $40 million range in rev-share and NIL in football and north of $10 million in basketball with Wade back aboard.
LSU is going everything, everywhere, all the time, and the Tigers aren't asking for our permission or approval in how they pursue it.