re: How can anyone defend the conversations from the tapes?

Exactly. The only real question to gauge how badly the Admins fricked up or not is how the NCAA got involved. As far as I've seen we've seen no reporting that definitively states one way or the other that the NCAA requested to be at the meeting with WW or whether LSU requested that. If LSU requested the NCAA be there then yeah, the administration is likely throwing Wade under the bus for the benefit of the school. It sucks, along with most of the other shite this admin does, but it's understandable. If the NCAA called up Alleva and said, "Hey, have you asked Wade about anything on those tapes," and eventually the conversation wound up that LSU was going to call a meeting with Wade and the NCAA themselves requested permission to attend and the admins granted it, then this shite is almost entirely on Wade and I don't have any sympathy for him or problems with the admin doing what it did.

But fricking no one can just fricking wait for a fricking story to fricking develop in this entire god damned fricking country. Adopt a narrative, keep plugging. fricking morons all of us.