The Josh Innes Show - College Sports Is As Gross As Politics

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

Will Wade is back to LSU. I'm sort of torn. I don't like Will Wade. He's pretty gross. On the other hand, the non LSU people acting like the rest of the world isn't scummy annoys me. That said, this conversation devolves into a full on retrospective of classic Ebaums World and YouTube videos? Why? Because that's what I do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, everybody. Welcome in All Up, Ennis. I hope you're doing well this morning, or whenever you're listening to this. It's 9.43 in the morning in Detroit. So, hello. Let me play some commercials here. Let's just get these right out of the way. This will wade back to LSU story is fascinating, but it's not really an LSU story so much as it's really just the filth, flaren, floren, floren, fler and filth of the, uh, college sports landscape. I mean, it's always been a filthy, gross, disgusting, vile field. But now it's even more filthy, gross, vile, and disgusting. Like, it is, like, I mean, now at least it's out in the open, I guess. Now you can just kind of openly be vile, I suppose. But it's just icky.

Everything about it's icky. But let's get into it after these words. All right. So, let's start here. So Will Wade, who I've never liked. I didn't like him when he got whacked at LSU. way the LSU people rallied around him like he was some sort of oppressed poor, you know, you know, unjustly vilified person during all that shit that went down that got him fired.

Now, that said, he's the guy that essentially took the fall for a lot of shit that a lot of people were doing. So from that regard, I get it. And there was a lot of people reacting to him, you know, like the Dick Vitals of the world and shit that like, you know, just, you know, shame, shame, shame and all that. But LSU ends up firing the guy. And he's out of the game. him for a while, then goes to McNeice, which is right down the road from Baton Rouge, if you don't know. McNeice is in Lake Charles, Louisiana, which is about an hour and a half away from Baton Rouge towards Houston, and then he ends up getting this job at North Carolina State. And I thought he had been there for like two years.

As it turns out, he hasn't been. He's been there for like a year. And now he's back at LSU. It is truly wild. Like, if you want to believe in anything is possible, like the concept of anything is possible, I truly now believe anything is possible because a guy who was fired from a university, what four years ago, whatever it was,

was fired from a school with cause, by the way. They had cause and they won that. They fired him with cause. That that guy is back at that school. I truly think anything is possible. The only thing that would have made me believe that more is if like Nick Sabin coached at LSU again or something

is possible. With this guy getting back to LSU, anything is truly possible. And there are a lot of layers to this, right? So where do we start? Let's start with the idea that Will Wade is some sort of scumbag different than the other scumbags that are involved in this field, right? Now, maybe it's like politics. I actually think college athletics is a lot like politics.

And I do think that at some point, someone got into politics, just like they got into coaching, because they had a noble reasoning for it. Right. Like, I think there are a lot of people who became coaches because they just wanted to help kids, whatever. They wanted to teach the game. They wanted to be a coach. Of course, they probably wanted to make money, win national titles and all that. But when they got into coaching at a young age in high school and had to teach PE, probably had to go to college and get like a kinesiology degree or a teaching degree, or whatever it was to be able to be a P.E. teacher that would allow them to be a coach at the high school level or whatever.

They had decent, what's the word I'm looking for? Like, their aspirations and goals were at least somewhat noble. Like, I don't think anybody got into college coaching to be a scumbag. And I think that some people, I do believe to some degree, maybe more so back then than now, I think most people get into politics now to be scumbags. I don't believe in any of these people. I think they're lying sacks of shit. I don't believe in them.

But I do think there was maybe a time when people got into politics in a bygone era where doing the right thing or trying to help the greater good mattered. Right? Like, I do believe that. Maybe I'm naive. Maybe I'm a dipshit. Maybe that's totally fine. But I do think there was a time when some people got into politics because they truly

wanted to make a difference. Now, not one of these people involved do I believe are anybody that wants to help anybody or make a difference. Okay? And I think it's similar to coaching. I think the political world is a lot like coaching, particularly in the college world. Pro world's different. College world is just a seedy, disgusting, gross place.

And the only way to truly survive is to get down in the weeds. Look, if you want to look at what politics is now, like at least back in the day, we knew they were slimy, but just didn't get out there. And we just kind of lived our lives. Somebody would get elected. And for four years, you'd have a Republican president. then you'd have eight years of a liberal president. And you would just kind of ebb and flow. And the one group would bitch, but you didn't really hear from them a lot because there was no social media.

Then the other side would bitch. The late night talk show hosts would make fun of all love them. And we'd go about our lives and we'd live. And that's how college athletics was. You know, for the most part, you knew it was Citi. You knew that there were teams that are getting away with more shit than others were allowed to. You knew that there were people who were scapegoated while others got away with shit. Like you knew all this stuff and you knew it was going on.

You knew what the world was, and we just kind of accepted it. But now, 2006, we're in a grosser world. We're in a disgusting world. We're in a place where everything is out there for everyone. And now it's just the Wild West, and there is no shame, nothing. It is just, it is Wild West, I think, is the best way to put it. It is just, it is Grand Theft Auto. The college athletic world, much like politics, right?

Like, as I said, back in the day, politics, you knew people were kind of slimy, kind of scuzzy. But, you know, like, it didn't really come out publicly unless there was a huge scandal. And we all just kind of lived our lives, right? Now look at it. It's Trump. It's, I'm glad this person is dead. It's, oh, I think Trump faked his assassination attempts. It's, ooh, Charlie Kirk deserved to die.

It's AOC. It's all these people, right? Like, it's out there, and it's just, it plays out as a real-life drama. and it's gross. College athletics and politics, era to era, have kind of mirrored each other. And as it stands now, they're mirroring each other. There is no shame in politics. People flip sides.

People lie. People tell you lies. People will outwardly just defend their people because they are their people and they are on their side of things and they want to keep power. It is very similar. These two situations, these two worlds is a better way of putting it. These two worlds, college athletics and politics mirror each other. And it's disgusting.

Like, look, if you're an LSU person today, right? It's LSU versus everybody when it comes to this shit. Because everybody else across the country, knowing that their athletic departments are scuzzy and their athletic departments will do whatever they need to do to win, everybody who's not LSU is going to point at LSU and say that everybody involved at LSU in this whole situation are all scumbags. and they'll hand ring and they'll say, can you believe this? What a horrible group of assholes at LSU.

They're what's wrong with college athletics. While all these schools are doing the same shit and they'd all take a guy if they could. Now, LSU's doing it on a special level. What LSU is doing is a pretty remarkable thing. I mean, what they've done in the last four months with Lane Kiffin and now Will Wade is pretty remarkable. We may never see anything like this again.

It's like a special form of scummy and scuzzy. and gross. Part of it is don't hate the player, hate the game, right? You can go back to Lane Kiffin and say, this guy left his team that was in the college football playoff to take the LSU job. Well, don't hate the player hate the game. He could have left and still coach.

They didn't let him coach. They made the choice not let him coach. What about Will Wade, who just got to North Carolina State now he's going back to LSU? Well, I mean, he's got a contract. There's a buyout in the contract. They knew it when he signed the contract. LSU's going to pay the buyout. And don't hate the player, hate the game. I get that aspect of it, but it is scuzzy and gross. And much like what we do with

politics, we just sort of accept it now. We don't even fight the fact that it's scuzzy and gross. We don't even bother. Like when Trump comes out and says, hey, you know, I'm glad this person is dead. We're just kind of immune to it now. We're like, yeah, okay, Trump said he's, you know, happy this guy's dead. Cool. Or like, hey, there's a group of people that are claiming that Trump faked his assassination. There's a group of people that are glad Charlie Kirk died. There's a whole group of people who are saying that they wish Trump would have been shot and actually the bullet would have hit his face.

And we just kind of go, eh. I mean, think about the Charlie Kirk assassination, which we watched, not in real time, but damn near in real time. And we watched Charlie Kirk get plugged all over the internet. Like the second you heard about it, everybody rushed to Twitter to go, hey, I wonder if there's video of this. Oh, by the way, there is video of this. Oh, by the way, this guy got shot in the neck and just blood is gushing from this guy's neck.

We watched a snuff film, right? There's no other way to put that. It is the definition of a snuff film. And we all rushed to the internet to watch it. And it's like, oh, that was pretty fucked up. Well, anyway, let me set my fantasy lineup or let me go bet on Ukrainian table tennis. Or, hey, I'm just going to meet up with my wife and go to dinner tonight. Like, it's nothing.

We see fucked up shit now and just kind of go, Oh, that's pretty fucked up. Whatever. That's pretty fucked up shit. But, you know, we'll live. And we just go on because we're immune to fucked up shit now. And it's pretty, the fucked up part is we just, it doesn't impact us. Like, I watched that video of Charlie Kirk, who, by the way, I didn't give two fucks about.

I couldn't tell you any of his politics or anything. I mean, I knew he was a right-wing guy because people I know who are right-wing people thought he was some sort of brilliant guy. But I didn't give a shit about his thoughts on anything. And I still don't care about any of his thoughts on anything. He was nobody that I aspired to be or looked up to or viewed as a fucking hero or anything like that. Like, guy didn't deserve to get his head blown off. But, like, he's nobody that I, like, aspired to be or anybody that inspired me. But I go to Twitter and I watch this video of this guy getting shot in the neck and dying in front of all these people.

And I'm just like, oh, oh, it's another day. See you guys over at Blockbuster. You know, like, hey, you guys want to rent a movie tonight? Do you guys want to go to Chili's? get some skillet questo like what are we going to do and i think that's in the similar way that we see these things and like we are we are so used to seeing this shit that nothing shocks us like what shocks us anymore there's a great topic for you what could you see or hear that would truly shock you and not just shock you from the standpoint of this person said something that's

from a different political group and since they said it i'm appalled by it but when my guy says it I'm fine with it. Like, once you've seen somebody just get his head blown off on the internet, and not like how you used to have to do it. Like back in the day, you had to go to rotten.com or like somebody had to have a special faces of death tape that like a bunch of dudes would get together and watch in a garage. Like now we just see shit like it's old hat. Like it's just super common shit, right?

Like that's all we see now. And we watch it and we're like, yeah, that's a drag. Boy, sorry to see that guy got his head blown off. but I got a guy on the other line about some white walls. I'll talk to you later. And that's kind of what we've become as a people, right? So it's pretty fucked up. That as people, that's just kind of we accept that.

What would shock you? Like, I guess if we had video of Trump and Epstein together on an island with a Boy Scout troop and there's actual video. And then even then we'd be like, as that AI? Nothing shocks us anymore. Find me something. If we're not shocked by watching a guy get shot in the neck on the internet, then what are we shocked by? Nothing, right?

Boy, rotten.com, though. Remember rotten.com? Celebrity morgue. I don't think rotten.com exists anymore, but that was like the first place that I had, because I never watched faces of death or anything like that. That really wasn't my jam and I didn't really have access to it. but rotten.com I had access to and rotten.com was like like I don't know I think my dad showed me that and you'd go and you'd be like hey rotten dot com let's let's look at Marilyn Monroe's autopsy photos and be like yeah let's and you're like why was I into this why did I watch this celebrity morgue let me okay that probably should I'm going to look this up on my phone instead maybe not on the work computer but let's see if rotten.com is still a thing. When you type in rotten.com,

where does it take you in 2026? Rotten.com. Is it still a thing? I don't know why my phone's moving slow. Maybe it's like, bro, you don't want to go to rotten.com. I wonder if anybody's written like a lengthy story or anything about rotten.com. Like, hey, here's a retrospective about rotten.com. Although now it's like nothing will go through on my phone.

I've probably given my phone. Aids. They're like, are you sure you want to do that? Are you sure you want to open this box? It's kind of like whenever Lydia had to make the decision, like, hey, if you say Beetlejuice three times and you let this son of a bitch out, it's your responsibility. He's going to fuck shit up. Do you really want the responsibility of being the guy that opens up rotten.com? And what if that kind of opens the door like in a Beetlejuice way? Like all of a sudden, this just opens up the world of rotten.com and it's back out there in the world. But I used to hit a lot of, up rotten.com all the fucking time. Celebrity morgue and like weird morbid stories and shit.