The Josh Innes Show - Kyren Lacy

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Former LSU WR Kyren Lacy died over the weekend in an apparent suicide. It's a crappy story all the way around. I think we are in an era where we aren't teaching young people how to deal with adversity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All righty, headline reads, ex-LSU wide receiver Kyron Lacey died in apparent suicide, authorities say. You talk about one that kind of sends a shock when you read it. So I guess it was yesterday that this news broke about this, and I was in the car just scrolling through Twitter, and I think Jilly was in a store or something like that. And I'm just kind of scrolling through, and I'm sitting there, and I say, she comes back to the car, and I think Jilly was in a store or something like that and I'm just kind of scrolling through and I'm sitting there and I say she comes back to the car and I say you know Jilly it says that Kyron Lacey died and uh no shit like that's just one of those ones you know young dude

about to go to the NFL when you hear that the person is dead that's certainly kind of a jarring thing right like just someone that you know a couple months ago you're betting on in football games a couple months ago is the star receiver at LSU. Also a couple of months ago, a guy who was involved in an accident that killed a guy that he fled from. And it's been seemingly downhill since then. But he's been at the Combine and he's run at the Combine. Presumably going to be an NFL star, get drafted. And now he's dead, 24 years old.

And yesterday we didn't know this, or at least early years old and yesterday we didn't know this or at least early in the day yesterday we didn't know this we didn't know that it was a suicide we now know at least according to the authorities it is a presumed suicide former LSU receiver Kyron Lacey who was found dead Saturday night in Houston died in an apparent suicide in his car while being pursued by authorities, according to Harris County, Texas Sheriff's report released Sunday. According to Harris County authorities, police responded to a call from a female family members who said Lacey had discharged a firearm into the ground during a verbal argument late Saturday night. When they arrived on the scene, they learned that the suspect, Lacey, had fled in a vehicle. Authorities say their pursuit of Lacey ended when he crashed.

They say that when officers approached the vehicle to extract Lacey, he had died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Lacey, 24, was pronounced dead at the scene by emergency responders. He had been facing criminal charges stemming from a fatal car accident in Louisiana in December. Of course, it's sad. It's a sad story. It's obviously a sad story because this guy's life should have never gone in this direction. It's sad that he's dead. It's sad that he killed a guy a couple months ago in a car accident. There's a lot of elements to this that are sad stories, right? It's a sad story. But this kind of comes to a thing that we talk about a lot on this podcast. We talk about this pretty frequently, and it's the kind of people that we are producing in society now in 2025. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that this guy is dead today because of like NIL.

I don't believe that. But I think that that kind of goes to a bigger picture issue when we're talking about how people handle things, how people handle adversity in their lives or otherwise. Let's play a couple commercials, and we will continue that discussion. All right, if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you got to check out Pick 6 from DraftKings. When it comes to basketball payouts, DraftKings Pick 6 posterizes the competition, including prize picks. It's a very simple simple concept hit all your picks and score higher minimum payouts

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including new york and ontario void where prohibited one per new customer bonus awarded as non-withdrawable pick six credits that expire in 14 days limited time offer see terms at pick six dot draftkings.com slash promos so what do I mean when I say how people handle adversity? This is obviously a situation that was one that is a tough situation to deal with for an individual. Guy, not on purpose, but a guy killed somebody by breaking the law in the way he was driving his car. He killed another person and now he was about to face charges for that. I'm assuming then because after he shoots the gun into the ground and somebody in his family calls and says, hey, he shot this gun into the ground,

that really set him off and really put him in a bad way mentally, and he had no other choice in his mind than to flee the scene, and then he was going to get arrested because he fled from the cops, and I guess in his mind, his life was over. I don't know if it goes further back than that. I don't know if this is a guy that's had mental problems. I don't know if this guy has had psychological issues. I have no clue.

But from the sounds of it, once my man fled and was running from the cops, he just figured, you know what? It's done. Like, I've got a gun on me right now. My NFL career is probably in jeopardy. My life is over, so I'm just going to end it. He was obviously in a bad way mentally. Who knows what was going to happen with the deal where he killed the guy.

I mean, my guess is the guy still would have gone to the NFL, but I don't know. Now, big picture thing. If we want to have a big picture discussion about these type of things and the kind of people that we are producing, particularly young athletes and people in the college world who essentially are forgiven all of their ills because they can dunk, they can throw a football, they can catch a football, they can hit home runs. They are forgiven all their ills and people sit here and coddle them and pacify them and from a very early age tell them that they are essentially invincible because in their minds they are because everybody is suckling off of the teeth of these guys, whether it's

coaches, whether it's parents, whether it's AAU coaches, whomever it is that tries to exploit the talent of these guys for their own gain. That does happen. That's reality. The thing that's interesting though, when you look at what we're doing and what kind of people we're producing, not to say that this was a bad dude. I mean, it's, I mean, a good young dude. I don't know if he was a bad dude, good dude, whatever. Got in an accident, killed a guy. It's not like he went out that day like, hey, I'm going to kill someone. There's a big difference between that and grabbing a gun and just shooting somebody at a club or something like that you know what I'm saying it's a different type of situation so I don't know that this was a bad dude this was a dude that had some issues and shit went real south for him real fast and uh as um as Kincaid said in Nightmare on Elm Street 3, The Dream Warriors. He couldn't hack it, so he got nailed.

That's it. He is Kincaid, who very eloquently would put things in Nightmare on Elm Street 3, The Dream Warriors, and Nightmare on Elm Street 4, The Dream Master. Guy couldn't hack it anymore, killed himself. But when I say the big picture part of it, we're talking about guys who from a very early age now are being offered tons of money,

and the internet doesn't help out, and here's why the internet, and we always go back kind of to the internet being a terrible place, the internet being really the root of a lot of the ills of the world. Most people on the internet, real talk, are not smart people.

Most people on the internet do not have your best interest at heart. Most people on the internet on social media are completely biased. They do not care about the truth. They do not care about reality. They do not care about what is right and wrong. They care about what matters in their own mind and how it moves their narrative or their personal viewpoint, right? Just go look at the comment section on anything. I guarantee if you go back and look at the comment section on when this guy initially did this, when he initially, not when he killed himself, but when he got into the accident and ran from the cops and then, or left the scene, fled the scene, and this guy was left to die. I guarantee you a large portion of the people commenting on that were defending the dude.

Because he's a football player. Because maybe they they maybe racially they were like there are some people you know this there are people that are going to defend somebody no matter what based on their race whether they're black white whatever so there's a lot of people who are going to view people as guilty just based on their race right like that's what happens but the internet has now created this world where people are evil they're vile they're terrible but even worse than being even violent terrible you could argue is that they are people who are being accepting of bad shit from people because it brings they do something that brings them joy so they forgive the bad shit and i think you get that a lot and you create people who

have no real concept of how the world works and you get people who have no concept of how to deal with adversity or deal with struggle. And I think that's what you dealt with here. Now, this is a unique case of struggle. This is a unique case of, you know, this is a guy who could be in the NFL, but this is a guy who also was involved in an auto accident that killed somebody and he fled the scene. This isn't just, you know, oops, the guy got caught drinking or something. So it's a much bigger thing when you talk about people not knowing how to handle adversity. But I think we're going to continue to create more and more people like this. And by like this, I don't mean people necessarily that go kill themselves because they're running from the cops and they feel like there's no way out but it's going to be people who

have no real ability to figure things out or deal with adversity or deal with I don't want to say drama isn't the right word but deal with that kind of situation. They don't know how to do it because they've never had to because nobody makes them deal with adversity. Like the most adversity they might know is football. And you know what? If you deal with adversity in football in college now, you know what you do? You just fucking leave and go to the next place. And then when you deal with adversity there, you leave and go to the next place.

People aren't being taught how to be resilient and work through things. People aren't really being helped at all. And we're actually hurting these dudes. Look, I'm not against guys getting paid. You know, I'm not against the guys getting paid. We talk about that on here all the time. That's not what this is. But the problem is, this is where the nuance matters and we don't get any nuance in the discussions about shit like NIL and the way dudes are handled in college. You're basically taking a high school dude that's 17, 18, 19 years old, however old he is, a young dude, giving him a shit ton of cash and really no real responsibility other than to play football.

And you're going to defend him no matter what. And he's going to be able to get away presumably with a lot of shit, whether it's, you know, high end shit or just kind of low end kind of shit, but going to be able to get away with a lot of shit because he's a football player and they don't know what it's like to have to deal with the real world. And it's starting much earlier with these guys. Now that's the other thing is like, it's not like it's just starting when they're in college. Like people are recruiting dudes that are high end athletes when they're 11, 12 years old. So from the time they're 11, 12 years old, they're being taught and told that they are incredible and their shit doesn't stink. And they don't know how to deal with real life adversity.

And so when you see people constantly having money thrown at them, or you see a situation where a guy's at a college and he's not getting the playing time he thinks he deserves after being there for five minutes and decides he wants to leave and can leave again and again and again and fly, and it's a flight mentality. No one really sticks around. Nobody tries to learn anything. Nobody tries to improve themselves. It's just on to the next one. And maybe that works in college when you're a high-end college athlete. But what happens when the crowds are done chanting your name? What happens when the money dries up from these NIL deals you signed? What have you

learned? And I'm not saying these guys are going to college to get an education. I don't mean a book smart education. I mean, what did you learn in the ways of being an adult? What did you learn about being a man? And I think what's happening is a lot of these guys are just getting used up by these programs. Now they're getting tons of money thrown at them. The programs use them up for as long as they need them. Then when it's done, it's over. And I don't think these guys are learning anything about life.

And look, I played sports at a very low level. Like the highest I went was high school. And I played high And look, I played sports at a very low level. Like the highest I went was high school and I played high school basketball and I wasn't very good, but there's something to be said about things I learned from people who were my coaches and my mentors. And I think that's important. Like, I feel like I learned things about being an adult from the people who taught me in high school. One of my best friends in the world is still coach Lemoyne at Brulee high school, who was my basketball coach for one year. And I was the principal for the other three years. I was there and is still there.

Like I learned things like the other day. It's funny. I was like, um, I held the door for someone at like a department store or something at the mall, whatever. And, um, lady goes thing and said, yes, ma'am. And she was like, Oh, you don't, you don't have to call me ma'am. And I'm like, well, that's just kind of how I was raised. And the reason I was raised that way is not from my dad. My dad didn't tell me to say yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. That's because that's what I was taught living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana from the time I

was 10 to the time I was 23 is it's yes, sir. And yes, ma'am. Doesn't matter who it is. It's yes, sir. And yes, ma'am. Doesn't matter who it is. It's yes, sir. And yes, ma'am. Now that's a very small thing. I understand that. But I often think of that like, had I never moved to Louisiana, maybe nobody would have ever taught me those kinds of things and the respect to have for those types of people.

But the person who really taught me that respect is coach Lemoyne at Brutally high school. And that's why I, like, I speak so highly of him because I felt like I learned a lot about being an adult or a grown-up from him. I learned a lot about life from him. And you wonder how much these dudes now are actually learning about life from the coaches, especially in the NIL world

where we're treating 18-year-olds who've never done a damn thing in their life, big picture, like they're Terrell Owens like they're Joe Montana like what are these dudes actually learning so while I don't believe that that's what this story is I don't believe that Lacey killed himself it wasn't an NIL like NIL didn't drive him to this situation it sounds like he just got himself into a really bad spot and felt he couldn't get out of that spot. That's not a condemnation on NIL on its own. But I do think we're getting to a point where you're having a hard time getting dudes, like getting through to dudes because it's so easy to just throw up the deuces and leave and no one has to deal with that adversity.

And that's a huge part of life. But what's happening for these guys is they're seeing that life is really fucking easy. And as it turns out, it's not. But they don't know how to handle it when it gets tough. And I think NIL is kind of a gateway to that, if not done right, which it obviously isn't. What did we talk about before with NIL? Like, you look at this story about the quarterback from Tennessee.

It's like, dude just wants $8 million. He was making like $4 million or whatever the number was. Now he wants $8 million. And the school's like, we're not going to fucking pay that, dude. Like, let someone else go pay that to you. And like, what does it mean? You know, like, is it that big of a deal? Like, when you look at this, like, and you look at these guys, like the guy at Tennessee,

you look at the guy at Tennessee, Nico, and this dude's like, doesn't have a contract, doesn't have any responsibility. Anybody can just leave. Like, what are you learning about life when you can just, and by the way, being the quarterback at Tennessee is not a job. That is a career. If we're looking for a comparison, right? A job is, you don't feel bad if you leave your job at Kmart and go work at Walmart doing the same job. Those are jobs. Those are not necessarily careers. But if you're in a big job and you're, I don't know, a news anchor, it is a big deal if you go from being the news anchor at ABC to the one at NBC.

And that's why a contract matters. And these guys don't have to deal with that. They don't have to know what it's like to have a contract that they break and that there's consequences. There are no consequences. These guys can just leave. And when you create a world where there are zero consequences for people, hey, you want to bench a guy because he screwed up? You know what that guy's going to do? He's going to leave and go to the next place. You can't discipline people. Hey, you want to bench a guy because he screwed up? You know what that guy's going to do? He's going to leave and go to the next place. You can't discipline people. And again, that's why Saban partly is why Saban got out of it. That's why coach K retired. And the argument would be,

well, those guys got to take advantage of this for so long. And now the tide has turned and they can't handle it. Maybe, maybe, but you know, those guys did a lot of, a lot of fucking winning. And I guarantee you, if you played football for Nick Saban you played basketball for Coach K you probably learned a little bit about life what's happening now is you've taken the ability to teach and coach and mentor dudes out of the game

because everything is just about dollars and cents now so it's a screwed up situation but anyway more to come