The NCAA's notice of allegations against LSU not only resulted in the firing of men’s basketball coach Will Wade, but another Tigers program, a notorious coach and NFL star got caught up in the violations as well.
The football team also part of the inquiry, and former coach Ed Orgeron was handed a Level III violation for “impermissible recruiting contact” in January 2019. He allegedly met a prospect in the individual's high school coach's office “prior to July 1 following the prospect's completion of his junior year,” according to the NOA documents.
Orgeron is out of coaching, and a Level III violation is far less significant than the Level I violations that Wade faces.
But the violations for the football program did not stop there, however.
Originally, the NCAA was looking into John Paul Funes’s payments of $180,000 to the father of former All-SEC offensive lineman Vadal Alexander. According to the NOA documents, Funes met with the parents of the athlete in late 2012 or early ’13 and offered to employ them both, the mother at Our Lady of the Lake hospital system and the father at Our Lady of the Lake Foundation.
The arrangement was for the father to be paid $3,150 in February 2013 and “recurring monthly payments of $3,000” from the Foundation. The arrangement continued for nearly five years despite the father not working more than five events, according to the notice.
The athlete subsequently “competed in fifty contests and received actual and necessary expenses while ineligible.” The panel determined that these allegations were a Level I violation.
According to Sports Illustrated's Ross Dellenger, the football probe was in its final stages of completion when NFL star Odell Beckham Jr. forced the NCAA to reopen it. The former LSU wide receiver distributed $2,000 worth of $100 bills during a wild scene that unfolded on the field following the program’s win over Clemson in the national championship game at the New Orleans Superdome in early 2020.
Per the notice, Beckham Jr. “provided $800 and $500 in cash to student-athletes 1 and 2, respectively, while on the field immediately following the game. In addition, that same night, at a club in New Orleans, Beckham provided student-athletes 3 and 4 with $500 and $200 in cash, respectively.”
This resulted in a Level II violation.
The Tigers football program had initially self-imposed penalties back in October 2020 in hopes that the NCAA would not levy more. It docked itself eight football scholarships over a two-year period and reduced recruiting visits, evaluations and communication, as previously reported by Dellenger and SI's Pat Forde. Beckham Jr. was also suspended from the team's facilities for two years for his actions.
