GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
LSU incoming president Wade Rousse wasted no time in making his first decision on the day he was announced as LSU’s new leader on Tuesday.
1st, LSU had the Dalton & James Gang at running back in the 1980s – D.Hilliard and Garry J. Now, it’s the Dalton & Rousse Gang assuming campus leadership. But no one knows who gets the house yet. @ByPiperHutch https://t.co/tq4toIGKAy
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) November 4, 2025
Rousse announced that interim athletic director Verge Ausberry, who was named that last Thursday, is now athletic director Verge Ausberry, according to Tiger Rag sources that confirmed previous reports.
STORY UPDATE
But Rousse said this to Piper Hutchinson of the Louisiana Illuminator on Wednesday: “I’ll remove the interim and then we’ll assess the situation. I can’t make a very good decision after being on the job for eight hours.”
Rousse added that a new athletic director contract for Ausberry will not be drawn up until the final decision on his title is made, “if we go down that road.”
I asked incoming #LSU President Wade Rousse on decision to name Verge Ausberry the permanent AD. “I'll remove the interim [title] and then we'll assess the situation. I can't make a very good decision after being on that on the job for eight hours…”
— Piper Hutchinson (@ByPiperHutch) November 5, 2025
If? And Rousse just put Ausberry in the same boat he was in as he opened the coaching search with prospective coaches and their agents wondering who the actual athletic director will be.
Rousse, formerly the president of tiny McNeese State University in Lake Charles, also told Hutchinson that he was not familiar with Ausberry’s suspension in 2021 for ignoring accusations of sexual assault against LSU football players after an investigation by the Husch Blackwell law firm.
So, as is often the case at LSU, not everyone is on the same page. And Rousse seems to be adapting to the often confused LSU way … right off the bat.
But he wasn’t done yet. Later Wednesday, Rousse appeared on WWL Radio in New Orleans and tried to correct his mistake as told to Hutchinson.
“I removed the interim tag,” he said. “He’s the acting athletic director. He has my full authority to go find us a coach for the the best job in America.”
Mr. Rousse, “acting” athletic director is the same as “interim” athletic director. You again put Ausberry back in a vulnerable position as he tries to find a coach. And he already had “full authority” to find a coach before you were ever were named president. And if you keep talking, LSU may no longer have the “best (football coaching) job in America” currently open.
Name Ausberry AD, then just stop talking. If you want to revisit later, go ahead, but don’t publicize it, imbecile. You’re not at McNeese now.
LSU officials, including Ausberry, had said on Tuesday that they could not yet make comments on Ausberry’s promotion, pending LSU releasing the news via the media relations department of either the university or the athletic department.
But LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey did discuss Ausberry’s athletic director title on Tuesday night after her Tigers defeated Houston Christian, 108-55, in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center to open the season.
“I’m happy. I heard Verge is now the AD,” Mulkey, who grew up in Tickfaw near Hammond, said. “I’m happy, because I think Verge is like a lot of us. He grew up in this state. This is his school. And time will help all of us.”
If Rousse does finally decide to get smart and really promote Ausberry to athletic director without the interim title, it will clearly help Ausberry as it will make his first job as athletic director much smoother – finding a new football coach. Ausberry, who has been LSU’s deputy athletic director since 2019 and has worked in various capacities in the department since 1991, was named interim athletic director last Thursday after the firing of athletic director Scott Woodward.
LSU's new president Wade Rousse has made the decision to elevate Verge Ausberry as permanent, full-time athletic director, sources tell @YahooSports. A formal announcement is expected in the coming days.
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) November 5, 2025
Ausberry, 58, was also on Thursday given full authority on the search for a new football coach to replace Brian Kelly, whom Woodward fired after four non-playoff seasons on Sunday, Oct. 26. But Ausberry found himself being asked by prospective head coaches and/or their agents over the last week, “Who will be the athletic director?”
Now, he can tell all candidates and agents he will be the athletic director. And more than anyone else, he is the search, as former LSU athletic director Joe Alleva said during the process that landed Ed Orgeron as coach in 2015.
Nick Saban is not coming Back, Shaq:https://t.co/aRGo6Q0CTN
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) November 4, 2025
Ausberry is currently involved and/or privy to in his fifth football coaching search at LSU with each role more significant than the previous. He was a minor assistant to LSU chancellor Mark Emmert’s search and hiring of Nick Saban from Michigan State in 1999 along with key players such as then-Board of Supervisors members Stanley Jacobs and Charlie Weems and outgoing athletic director Joe Dean.
In 2004, Ausberry assisted athletic director Skip Bertman, who was named athletic director in 2000 to replace Dean before taking over full time in 2001 after his final season as baseball coach, in the hiring of Oklahoma State coach Les Miles to replace Saban. Saban left to become the Miami Dolphins head coach after the 2004 season.
BOTH OF VERGE AUSBERRY’S SONS DID NOT MAKE LSU THEIR FIRST CHOICE FOR FOOTBALL
Ausberry was more heavily involved under Alleva in the hiring of Orgeron after the 2015 regular season. Orgeron had been named interim coach after four games into the ’15 season when Miles was fired. And Ausberry aided Woodward in the hiring of Kelly after the 2021 season to replace the fired Orgeron.
Rousse’s decision to promote Ausberry ends the possible candidacy of Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks for the job. Brooks, an LSU graduate from Hammond, strangely tweeted last week that he was taking his name out of the hat for the LSU athletic director job, even though Brooks said he was not contacted for the job. And he wasn’t.
Thanks, Josh, I would also like to take my name out of the hat for any MLB openings at Sports Illustrated, though I have also not been called.
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) October 31, 2025
Ausberry joined the LSU athletic department in 1991 as an intern in the compliance office. Over the course of his 30-plus year career, he served the Tigers in areas including academics, fundraising, corporate relations, marketing, game management, sport administration, life skills, sports medicine and performance, equipment and alumni relations, LSU’s release said.
In 2019, he was promoted to the role of Executive Deputy Athletic Director, as well as Executive Director of External Relations. In the latter role, he assists the Office of the President in external and governmental relations.
In 2021, Ausberry was suspended from LSU for 30 days and ordered to take training on sexual misconduct and domestic violence for not reporting and looking the other way in cases of LSU football players being accused of sexual assault. This was after an exhaustive investigation of LSU’s questionable practices or lack of practices toward sexual assault accusations by female students against LSU athletes by the Husch Blackwell law firm that shook the campus.
WHAT WE LEARNED ABOUT VERGE AUSBERRY FROM HUSCH BLACKWELL REPORT: GLENN GUILBEAU
Husch Blackwell uncovered police reports that detailed former LSU wide receiver Drake Davis texted Ausberry in 2018 and admitted to getting in a fight with his girlfriend, former LSU tennis star Jade Lewis, and hitting her. Ausberry never reported the claim to police or to LSU’s Title IX office. Husch Blackwell termed his lack of proper response “not credible.”
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