By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry is not one to mince words. Never has been, going back to his time as a linebacker under coach Bill Arnsparger and Mike Archer at LSU in the 1980s and throughout his rise in the athletic department since the 1990s.
And he remained that way in a story by Blake Toppmeyer of USA Today just published as he was with Tiger Rag interviews.
In USA Today, Ausberry compares former LSU coach Brian Kelly to new coach Lane Kiffin, whom Ausberry hired last November.
It’s over. Lane Kiffin is LSU’s next football coach. Press conference introducing him set for Monday at LSU.https://t.co/kTRsVE78Of
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) November 30, 2025
“He’s not one who’ll say, ‘OK, I don’t want people to contact me. I don’t want people to touch me. I don’t want people to be around me.’ That’s who we had,” Ausberry said of Kelly without saying his name. “That’s why we got what we got. There was no feel. There was no connection between the LSU football program, the coach, and the fans.”
Former LSU athletic director Scott Woodward and then-deputy athletic director Ausberry fired Kelly the day after an Oct. 25, 49-25 home loss to Texas A&M that dropped the Tigers to 5-3 overall (2-3, Southeastern Conference) and out of the College Football Playoff for the fourth straight time under Kelly in his four seasons. Kelly had been hired away from Notre Dame for $100 million over 10 years with expectations to be a playoff contender and win national championships.
“There was no connection and no building,” Ausberry continued about Kelly. “Not many employees connected. The former players didn’t connect. Yeah, I’m saying it. Now, former players live over there (at the facility), go over there, we welcome them over there, they work out over there. That’s what we want. That’s who LSU used to be. Former players came in the weight room, and they worked out. There wasn’t signing no form to be able to work out, or, ‘Who are you? You can’t work out at this time.’”
Ausberry said Kiffin has taken LSU back to the Nick Saban way of doing things. Saban was LSU’s coach from 2000-04 and won the school’s first national championship in the 2003 season since 1958.
“It’s going back to the Saban model, running the whole program,” said Ausberry, who has remained close friends with Saban and got his advice before hiring Kiffin, who was Saban’s offensive coordinator at Alabama from 2014-16.
“You have to go do some things with alumni and do things with boosters and do things with fundraising, with NIL,” Ausberry said. “You have to be a part of that. That’s what Lane will do. He’ll go out there and have that conversation with the donors and the people who support the program and say, ‘We need your help.’ And give them his cell number.”
Be the first to comment