Possible Wade meeting Monday; Lipsey and Williams may be working together to oust Alleva

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Some $600 million of the $1.5 billion fundraising goal is supposed to come from the Tiger Athletic Foundation, meaning 40 percent of the intended capital raise has to come from the school’s athletic donors. And to say those are furious about the athletic director is grossly insufficient to describe the situation.

Let’s remember that a couple of weeks ago former Board of Regents chairman Richard Lipsey, who 40 years ago founded the Tiger Athletic Foundation and has been a big-money donor ever since, publicly called for Alleva and Alexander’s ouster. Lipsey on Thursday morning put out a quite cryptic tweet on the subject of Wade’s status.

This wouldn’t make a lot of sense until you put it together with information we’ve gleaned from our sources, which is as follows: Lipsey is apparently working with LSU Board of Supervisors chair James Williams on an ouster of Alleva which may, if Lipsey is successful, happen within days if not hours.

Alleva’s contract has about 15 months left on it, and he makes in the neighborhood of $750,000 per year. That would make a buyout worth something just south of a million dollars, which we’re told Lipsey has put together.

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All of this came to the notice of LSU’s fans because of a Dellenger article that appeared at SI on the day after LSU defeated Vanderbilt in the regular-season finale, the first game of Wade’s suspension. At that game Alleva was positively raked over the coals by the 14,000 LSU fans in attendance, and the Dellenger piece read as an attempt by Alleva to message that it was Williams, rather than Alleva, responsible for the decision to suspend the coach.

Which meant he more or less hung Williams out to dry, and likely put Williams in the line of fire from the fans. One would imagine the board chairman didn’t appreciate that much, and might well have decided he’d get on board with the idea of unloading Alleva.

And there is more to this, which is that Williams has lots of political connections to the New Orleans political elite, including the Morial clan – which is something LSU assistant athletic director Verge Ausberry shares, having married a Morial. So by moving Alleva and installing Ausberry as an interim AD Williams may well have pulled off a significant political coup which would have the benefit of pleasing a large number of the fans and potentially helping to kick-start that moribund capital campaign.

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