By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Last Monday, LSU introduced a new basketball coach in Will Wade in unprecedented fashion in modern college athletics history as LSU just fired Wade four years ago for voluminous and reckless violations of NCAA recruiting rules.
But LSU fans then and now and, now, many LSU administrators as well love Will Wade passionately and rabidly, and he loves them back. His introductory press conference at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center sounded and reverberated more like the Final Four pep rally LSU held in the same arena the last time the Tigers went to the Final Four – 20 years ago this week under coach John Brady.
There were engineered flames, music from the LSU band, cheerleaders and hundreds of fans welcoming Wade back not as a rehabilitated former NCAA criminal, but as a conquering hero returning home, though his actual boyhood and young adult home was in Nashville, Tennessee, before he went to Clemson in South Carolina.
But there was something else going on at this pep rally/press conference off the main stage.
New LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry – just promoted from executive deputy AD last November after a coup d’e’tat involving Governor Jeff Landry that removed athletic director Scott Woodward last Oct. 30 – was exerting his strength. This was on the heels of new LSU president Wade Rousse just hiring a new executive deputy AD the previous Thursday. That is former McNeese State athletic director Heath Schroyer, who worked under Rousse at McNeese and hired Wade in 2023 – a year after LSU fired him.
In the past at LSU, the athletic director usually hired or promoted someone to deputy. Former LSU athletic director Skip Bertman, for example, hired American University athletic director Dan Radakovich to be his deputy in May of 2001. And Bertman brought in Ausberry, a former LSU linebacker who had worked for the Tiger Athletic Foundation fund-raising arm and at LSU’s Academic Center for Athletes, to the athletic deparment. Former LSU ADs Joe Alleva and Scott Woodward also did the hiring of their staffs.
Ausberry did not hire Schroyer. Rousse, who was just named LSU president last November 4 at the same time Ausberry went from interim AD to AD, did. And Rousse also gave Schroyer an interesting long version title – “Senior Deputy Athletic Director and Executive Director of External Relations of the LSU System.”
Before Wade stepped to the podium as the crowd of LSU’s major donors, Board of Supervisors members, various other powers that be, dignitaries and media members gathered and hobnobbed about, Schroyer was working the room big time.
Could that “LSU System” part of his title mean that Ausberry may have to answer to Schroyer at times? For when Schroyer was first hired by LSU last Thursday there was talk that Schroyer was on an equal basis with Ausberry, sort of like a co-coordinator in football, which rarely works.
And when Rousse first became LSU’s president on Nov. 4, he may have had it in his mind to hire Schroyer as LSU’s athletic director, judging by his erratic behavior at the time. At that time, Ausberry still had the interim athletic director title after just replacing Woodward on Oct. 30.
“We’ll assess the situation,” Rousse told Piper Hutchinson of the Louisiana Illuminator/Tiger Rag on Nov. 5 when asked if Ausberry will become THE athletic director. “I can’t make a very good decision after being on the job for eight hours.”
When asked about Ausberry’s contract, Rousse said, “We’re supposed to announce that in days, if we’re going to go down that road.”
If?
Rousse was obviously not ready to name Ausberry THE athletic director. He did say he was going to take the interim tag off, but during a WWL Radio appearance later on Nov. 5, Rousse said that Ausberry “is the acting athletic director.”
Uh, “acting” athletic director and “interim” athletic director are one in the same.
In the end, LSU’s real powers that be got to Rousse and explained to him how things work. And on Thursday, Nov. 6, LSU announced that Ausberry was THE athletic director.
And four months later, here’s Rousse’s and Wade’s guy – Heath Schroyer – working the room as “executive director of external relations for the LSU SYSTEM.”
Then during the press conference, Wade said this:
“I can’t even express in words what Dr. Rousse and the administration, everybody has meant to me,” he said. “I want to thank Governor Jeff Landry. I want to thank our wonderful LSU Board, many of whom are here today, and our great chairman, Lee Mallett.”
Landry and newly Landry-appointed Board chairman Lee Mallett – a friend of Schroyer and Wade from their McNeese days – tried to hire Wade last year to LSU, but Woodward blocked it. Ausberry also didn’t want that hire at that time. Perhaps “The General,” as LSU fans call Wade, remembers that as a slight. Wade requested that Schroyer be in place before he would accept the LSU job this time.
On Thursday, March 26, when confirmation of Wade becoming LSU’s coach happened, it was shortly after Schroyer coming to LSU was confirmed.
“I want to thank Dr. Rousse, who I’ve worked with before,” Wade went on. “We’re going to work well together again, get that alignment. We’ve got Heath Schroyer here – same chain of command, as Doc (Rousse) likes to say.”
Same chain of command? And Wade never once mentioned Verge Ausberry as new LSU football coach Lane Kiffin did at his introductory press conference on Dec. 1 multiple times. Ausberry hired Kiffin. Ausberry may have only assisted in the hiring of Wade. And he didn’t hire Schroyer.
“And certainly I want to thank our wonderful athletic administration and everybody involved in the athletic administration,” Wade said, but there was never a mention of Ausberry by name.
When Ausberry spoke at the podium, he mentioned Wade, Mallett and Rousse, but no Schroyer.
After the press conference, something else happened. Ausberry held his own impromptu press conference as several reporters gathered around him off stage right.
“I will oversee the whole athletic department,” he said. Then he listed his lieutenants who will be in charge of rivers of new revenue streams for NIL packages and to pay for Kiffin’s $91 million contract over seven years, former football coach Brian Kelly’s $54 million buyout, Wade’s $30 million contract over seven years, his $4 million buyout to North Carolina State and just-fired basketball coach Matt McMahon’s $8 million buyout.
Then Ausberry said Schroyer will be “the new lead administrator for the men’s basketball team” after proving himself at McNeese as a talented fund raiser.
That wasn’t new. The first story about Schroyer, who is a former men’s basketball coach, coming to LSU as an assistant athletic director by Tiger Rag on March 13 said he would work with basketball.
Maybe Ausberry just wanted to make it clear.
“I think that’s the thing Heath does,” Ausberry said. “He brings a lot of new money to us – a new donor pool to us. It gives us the southwest part of the state, where he’s from. And he can work some angles down there that we haven’t been able to get to in a long time.”
Sure doesn’t sound like he’s going to be running the athletic department as his “executive director of external relations for the LSU System” suggests.
“It’s great alignment,” Ausberry said. “It makes my world easier.”
Ausberry also listed his other administration lieutenants of fund raising by sport that will make his “world easier.”
FOOTBALL – Executive deputy athletic director and chief operating officer Julie Cromer will continue to oversee football NIL fund raising along with chief revenue officer Clay Harris as the point person for football money.
BASEBALL – Senior associate athletic director for facilities and events Dan Gaston will remain overseeing baseball, but Ausberry said he has added NIL money raising for baseball to the duties of deputy AD/chief stragety officer/media relations Zach Greenwell. And Greenwell will also lead NIL work for the women’s basketball team that will continue to be overseen by senior associate athletic director Miriam Segar.
“In addition to overseeing revenue share and NIL operations for the full department, I will be spending additional time assisting with women’s basketball and baseball with their NIL fund raising, but also their NIL strategy,” Greenwell told Tiger Rag. “The baseball and women’s basketball piece is new for me in this newest reorganization, although I was already overseeing revenue share and NIL strategy for the full department.
Greenwell also explained that the athletic department has not been completely restructured as some reports had.
“There are some reorganized duties, but all of the sports administrators, except Heath Schroyer, were already the lead administrators for those sports,” he said. “Julie Cromer (football), Dan Gaston (baseball) and Miriam Segar (women’s basketball) with those sports was already the case.”
The $20.5 million revenue share formula that goes directly to athletes also remains as previously reported – 75 percent of the $20.5 million for football, 15 percent for men’s basketball, five percent for women’s basketball and the remaining sports divvying up the remaining five percent.
Ausberry did not list the other sports on Monday. LSU is likely to put out a formal release explaining more details.
“We’re going to be out there beating the streets,” Ausberry said. “My job is to generate revenue for the whole department and make sure this department is in alignment – the president’s office, the the board and everything else, so that we win in every sport.”
Who wins in the often-volatile, new LSU athletic department, LSU System and LSU President hierarchy remains to be seen.
But it should be noted that when newbie LSU chancellor Sean O’Keefe clashed with veteran LSU athletic director Skip Bertman from 2005-08, Bertman won.
Ausberry has been entrenched in LSU Athletics, LSU Politics and State Capitol Politics – which are all three at times like now, one in the same – since the 1990s. All these McNeese State East greenhorns to LSU better know with whom they’re dealing.
My money’s on Ausberry.
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