Kim Mulkey gives passionate take on Scott Woodward ouster, hiring of Verge Ausberry

The LSU athletics department has undergone some upheaval in the last two weeks, as athletics director Scott Woodward was pushed out and an interim athletics director was appointed. On Tuesday, that interim appointment became permanent.

Verge Ausberry, a long-time LSU administrator who had been appointed the interim athletics director after Woodward’s ouster, will be named the full-time athletics director. It brings some closure to a tumultuous time in the state.

Women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey, who has brought a national title to Baton Rouge, chimed in on the news Tuesday evening. It was bittersweet for her.

“Scott hired me, so any time a coach is hired by somebody you have special feelings,” Mulkey said. “My feelings are far deeper because I’m from this state and I want all of us to always do good, I want us to look good, I want us to smell good. I want everything good about this state.”

That said, the silver lining is that the new athletics director also has plenty of ties to the state. Mulkey seemed pleased with the new appointment.

“I’m happy I heard Verge is now the AD,” Mulkey 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.”

More on new LSU AD Verge Ausberry

Ausberry has been at LSU since 1991, starting out as an intern in the compliance office. He then worked his way up the ladder and, in 2019, became the school’s executive deputy athletics director. He also served as the executive director of external relations, working closely with the president’s office on governmental relations – both internal and external.

“Verge Ausberry is a native son of Louisiana and LSU, who has spent all of his adult life working to better this athletic department and this state,” said LSU Board Athletics Committee chair John Carmouche in an Oct. 30 statement upon Ausberry’s elevation to interim AD.

“From the time he arrived on campus as a football student-athlete, he’s been associated with championship excellence and will continue to uphold that standard in his role as interim athletic director. He’s the ideal person to lead this department with full authority at this time, and together we show the country that LSU continues to be an elite destination for student-athletes, coaches and staff.”

LSU’s football coaching search remains the biggest storyline in Baton Rouge, and Ausberry addressed it during a press conference shortly after becoming interim athletics director. He made his expectations crystal clear: the Tigers should be a perennial College Football Playoff team.

“Our next chapter is to hire a football coach,” Ausberry said. “Hire the best football coach there is. That’s our jobs. We’ll go out there, and we are not going to let this program fail. LSU has to be in the playoffs every year in football. There’s 12 teams that make it. It’s going to expand here. We have to be one of those at LSU. No substitute.”

“We have to be talked about on ESPN. Every channel, we’re talking about LSU football. That is the way. This big building here has to be successful if we’re going to be successful as an athletic department. That’s the measuring stick that we have here.”

On3’s Nick Schultz also contributed to this report.