By RON HIGGINS, Journal Sports
BATON ROUGE – What do Matt Lee, Frank Wilson and Verge Ausberry have in common?
They are now serving as interims in three of the most powerful jobs on the LSU campus as president, head football coach and athletics director.
When sixth-year athletics director Scott Woodward was essentially fired Thursday night, Ausberry, a former two-time LSU football captain who’s the school’s Executive Deputy Athletic Director, was named interim.
He joins the Tigers’ trio of temps. Interim Lee is still in office after William F. Tate V departed to take charge at Rutgers on May 19. Wilson just replaced Brian Kelly, who was fired on Sunday as head football coach.
LSU also currently has vacancies for provost, general counsel, chief financial officer, Ag Center chancellor and law school dean.
It was Kelly’s firing that triggered a series of events leading to LSU alum Woodward negotiating to eventually receive his buyout of $6.7 million. The buyout, to be paid in full by 2030, would be offset when Woodward (who is required to search for a new job) finds new employment.
“Others can recap or opine on my tenure and on my decisions over the last six years as Director of Athletics, but I will not,” Baton Rouge native and LSU grad Woodward said in a released statement. “Rather, I will focus on the absolute joy that LSU athletics brings to our state’s residents and to the Baton Rouge community. I will cherish the incredible relationships I have built within the university community and beyond our campus borders. And I will fondly remember the national and SEC championships for the joy that they brought to our student-athletes, coaches, staff, campus community and our incredible fans.”
Ausberry, a New Iberia native and an LSU grad with multiple degrees, 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 in numerous capacities.
“I’m honored for the Board of Supervisors and university leadership to put their trust in me to serve the university in this role,” Ausberry said. “This institution has impacted my life and my family in ways I never could have imagined. It’s my responsibility to move this athletic department forward, including hiring the best football coach in America to lead our program.
LSU will hold an 8 a.m. press conference this morning to address the athletics director transition.
Woodward’s departure comes on the heels of Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry brazenly proclaiming at a Wednesday press briefing that Woodward wouldn’t be involved in hiring Kelly’s replacement.
“No, I can tell you right now, Scott Woodward is not selecting the next coach,” Landry said. “Hell, I’ll let Donald Trump select it before I let him do it. “
Landry fueled his narrative by incorrectly claiming that Woodward, an LSU graduate hired as athletics director in April 2019 after serving in a similar position for Texas A&M since January 2016, was responsible for two of the largest head coaching buyouts in college football history.
Woodward signed former Notre Dame head coach Kelly on Dec. 1, 2021, to a 10-year, $95-million LSU contract that had additional incentives pushing the value to more than $100 million. Kelly is owed almost $54 million after being with a 34-14 record just past the halfway point of his third season.
When Woodward was Texas A&M’s athletic director, he hired Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher as head football coach. Fisher’s contract was a 10-year, $75 million deal.
In August 2021, Russ Bjork, Woodward’s predecessor as A&M’s athletic director, awarded Fisher a four-year extension that increased his annual salary to more than $9 million.
When A&M fired Fisher in November 2023, his $77.5 million buyout was largely the result of the extension Fisher signed under Bjork, not Woodward’s original contract.
The facts didn’t stop Landry from publicly torching Woodward, widely regarded as one of the best LSU athletics directors in history and well-respected nationally among his peers.
Only less than a year on the job as LSU A.D., Woodward guided the athletic program through financial survival because of the COVID-19 pandemic starting in March 2020.
Beginning in July 2021, he had to transition LSU into the era of athletes being legally paid through NIL deals, and then revenue sharing for all athletes began this academic school year.
In the midst of those challenges, Woodward hired two head coaches (Kim Mulkey, Jay Johnson) and promoted another (Jay Clark).
That trio has won four national titles (baseball 2023, 2025, women’s basketball 2022, women’s gymnastics 2024) with a combined winning percentage of 75.4 (411-133-2) and 12 NCAA tourney appearances.
In April 2021, Woodward hired Naismith Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach and Louisiana native Mulkey away from Baylor where she won three national titles in 21 seasons.
“Scott Woodward is my kind of leader,” Mulkey said at her postgame press conference after LSU beat Iowa in the 2022 national championship game for the school’s first-ever men’s or women’s national hoops title. “We talk the same language. I don’t know if that’s a Louisiana thing. He’s from Baton Rouge. I’m from Hammond. But he just gets it. He gets it. He gets out of the way.
“He doesn’t have to be and doesn’t want to be the most important person in the athletic department. He wouldn’t even go out there tonight and cut the net down.”
Mulkey learned of Woodward’s firing Thursday night while she was coaching her team’s home exhibition game vs. Langston.
She was too upset to appear at her postgame press conference.
“Scott has a deep love for coaches and student-athletes,” said associate head coach Bob Starkey, who replaced Mulkey at the presser after describing her as heartbroken. “He works incredibly hard to make sure we have the resources. He has a passion of love about this university and this state. We, and I personally, are a lot better for him.”
In June 2021, Woodward hired Arizona’s Johnson as head baseball coach. So far, Johnson has won two national championships and produced three players who were top-three selections in the Major League Baseball draft.
“Scott’s there in the back,” Johnson said at his post-game press conference after the Tigers leveled fellow SEC member Florida in the 2023 College World Series finals to win the school’s seventh national championship. “I think he’s the best athletic director in the country. What baseball coach’s athletic director calls them two or three times a week (and asks) `Everything good?’”
In August 2021, upon the retirement of the legendary gymnastics coach D-D Breaux, Woodward didn’t hesitate to promote co-head coach Clark to head coach.
Clark’s 2024 team won the school’s first national championship.
Woodward, who graduated from LSU in 1985 in political science, was hired in 2000 as the school’s director of external affairs by Chancellor Mark Emmert. He was also the Chancellor’s Representative to the Athletic Department.
When Emmert became president of the University of Washington in 2004, he hired Woodard as Vice President of External Affairs and then named him athletics director in January 2008.
It started Woodward’s 17-year run as an athletics director that also included Texas A&M and LSU.
But LSU was different for Woodward. It was personal.
“I grew up a few miles from campus, attended Catholic High School, and enrolled at the university that would change my life in 1981,” Woodward said in Thursday’s farewell statement. “Our university will always hold a special place in my heart, and I will never be too far from LSU.”
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com