BATON ROUGE, La. — As interim athletic director Verge Ausberry sat between two members of the LSU Board of Supervisors who had been appointed by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, he sought to assure Tigers fans that the abrupt departure of previous athletic director Scott Woodward was not a sign of dysfunction.
“We have championship coaches here. This place is not broken,” Ausberry said Friday in a meeting room inside 102,000-seat Tiger Stadium, the home of a football program currently under the direction of interim coach Frank Wilson. “The athletic department is not broken. We win.”
A night earlier, one of those championship coaches, Kim Mulkey — who led LSU to its first national title in women’s basketball at the 2023 NCAA tournament — declined to attend a postgame news conference after a preseason exhibition because she was “heartbroken” over Woodward’s departure, said assistant coach Bob Starkey, who spoke in her place.
Woodward stepped down Thursday evening, four days after football coach Brian Kelly was fired eight games into his fourth season, one day after Landry asserted that Woodward would not select Kelly’s successor, and four years before Woodward’s contract as AD — worth close to $2 million annually — was due to expire.
“What an exciting day here today at LSU,” John Carmouche, who chairs the board’s athletic committee, said Friday morning as he formally introduced Ausberry as interim AD. “It is important to me and many others that LSU and our state restore balance so we can reclaim the future we built in athletics as an institution and as a state.”