LSU’s Will Wade needs to address allegations right away

Will Wade needs to speak up.

Yahoo! Sports has reported that Wade has been recorded speaking to a “recruiting middleman” about an “offer” Wade made to current LSU freshman Javonte Smart before Smart committed to the Tigers.

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We don’t know what the offer was, but we do know that the recording was made as part of the FBI’s investigation into corruption involving college basketball recruiting.

We do know that the “recruiting middleman” on the tape was Christian Dawkins, who was recently sentenced to serve six months in prison after being convicted on wire-fraud charges.

We do know that it has been reported that Wade has been subpoenaed to testify in a second trial in the scandal on April 22.

This looks and sounds very bad for Wade.

The latest story, the one involving the “offer,” broke Thursday, when Wade was already scheduled to speak with reporters in Baton Rouge. Naturally he was asked about the report, which he said he was made aware of about a half an hour before it was posted.

“I haven’t read it so I don’t have any comment on that,” Wade said.

Fair enough.

This is serious stuff.

But the excuse of not having read the report only gets Wade out of that initial questioning.

This needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed as soon as possible – like before the Tigers try and wrap up the SEC regular-season title against Vanderbilt on Saturday in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

If the allegation is untrue, or the word “offer” doesn’t mean what everyone understandably thinks it means or that’s not actually Wade on the tape, then he needs to make that clear right away for his own good.

But in the more likely case that it is Wade on the tape and the suspected transgression is at least partly true and some sort of offer was made to Smart to entice the highly sought-after prospect to choose LSU over numerous other suitors, then Wade needs to address that – for the sake of his team and his school.

Unfortunately for the Tigers, this potential championship – and almost certainly the rest of this season – will take place under a very large and very dark cloud.

Everything this Tigers team does the rest of the season will be viewed within the context of this suspicion about Wade and how he put this team together.

If Wade is innocent of any wrongdoing, saying so should be easy enough and something he would want to do immediately.

But if he chooses to get lawyered up and not address the issue now that he has had time to see the report, his silence will damage him, his team and his school.

Understandably, the questions will keep coming.

It’s hard to imagine any “offer” that could be made to a recruit – let alone a “strong-ass offer” as Wade reportedly says on tape – that isn’t a violation of NCAA rules.

But perhaps there is an innocent explanation for this.

If there is, Wade needs to present it before his team returns to the court.