PALMER: LSU’s commitment to men’s basketball will be revealed this month

By Hunt Palmer

For five years, LSU has found the money.

College athletics flipped on its head in June of 2021 when the payment of athletes became legal. LSU welcomed the era with a massive Times Square videoboard. And then the spending truly started.

This month we may find Louisiana’s limit.

The near future of LSU basketball will be determined by money. More directly, how much does LSU’s booster base have, and how willing is said base to part with it for men’s basketball?

Those questions don’t have to be asked about football. In the midst of paying Ed Orgeron $17 million in full to leave the program, Brian Kelly was guaranteed nearly $100 million to bolt from Notre Dame to Baton Rouge. His first defensive staff flopped, so LSU paid Matt House and company more than $5 million to leave and immediately made Blake Baker the highest paid assistant in the country on top of that. When Kelly needed $18 million for the 2025 roster, he got it. When Texas A&M embarrassed that $18 million roster, LSU found the $54 million to kick Kelly aside the next day.

Then Lane Kiffin showed up. He got $91 million to take the job, and his first roster will make more than $40 million. Baker flirted with Tulane and got north of $3 million annually to stay at LSU. Charlie Weis flirted with Ole Miss during the College Football Playoff run and got an extra $500,000 annually to honor his LSU agreement.

You get the picture.

Now, is LSU willing to take the same approach on a smaller scale with men’s basketball?

Matt McMahon is 60-70 through four years on the job and has won less than 24 percent of his conference games.

Conference Winning Percentage

Johnny Jones: 47%

Trent Johnson: 39%

Smoke Laval: 59%

Gerry Dinardo: 47%

Nikki Fargas: 51%

Curley Hallman: 32%

McMahon’s 24 percent isn’t really in shouting distance of any of those, and that’s a list of some coaches without a conference championship in Baton Rouge over the last 40 years. John Brady (Final Four), Van Chancellor (Final Four), Les Miles (national title) and Ed Orgeron (national title) all lost their jobs at LSU after winning the SEC and more.

McMahon’s record at LSU has been marred by misfortune, sure. To omit NCAA sanctions, a lack of initial NIL support and significant injuries would be completely unfair. However, part of running a program is handling those things.

LSU’s basketball record over the past four seasons is the worst in the Southeastern Conference. When that’s the case, whether it’s Missouri’s baseball coach or Vanderbilt’s football coach, a change is generally made.

Until now.

Just last week, South Carolina announced Lamont Paris would get a fifth season after winning just four SEC games in year five and compiling a 23-49 (32%) record with four dreadful seasons. Paris does have a 13-5 mark from his second season which ended with a lopsided loss as a No 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament to 10th seeded Oregon.

South Carolina suggested the decision was made to back Paris with more money. In actuality, Paris is being retained because the extension he received for his one successful season means the school would be on the hook for $12 million to buy him out. Considering the baseball program is in year two of what looks like a disastrous hire, and Shane Beamer enters the 2026 season on thin ice after missing a bowl game in 2025, South Carolina may be paying up to fix the sport’s most lucrative program and one that netted back-to-back national titles 15 years ago.

Add in the massive expenditure South Carolina, like LSU, makes in women’s basketball. That Paris buyout gets cost prohibitive in a hurry.

Unless, of course, you care enough to make it happen.

We don’t yet fully grasp just how much the LSU pocketbooks care about men’s basketball. There is no question about football. No one seems to mind the $8 million loss women’s basketball takes. Baseball is funded significantly. Men’s basketball needed a cash infusion for the 2025-26 season. It came, and the result was last place.

It’s hard to imagine McMahon heading back to the bank for another sizable withdrawal and getting the same response. The results are at an all-time low, and the fan interest matches that.

We’ll never really know what this team could have looked like with Dedan Thomas Jr. and Jalen Reed healthy for an entire season. That ship sailed around Christmas.

We will find out how much LSU cares about basketball and whether or not the money is there.