Scott Woodward is out as LSU’s athletic director, the school announced Thursday night, just days after the Tigers fired coach Brian Kelly amid a 5-3 season.
Verge Ausberry, the executive deputy athletic director, will be the interim athletic director.
“We thank Scott for the last six years of service as athletic director,” said Scott Ballard, LSU’s board of supervisors chair. “He had a lot of success at LSU, and we wish him nothing but the best in the future. Our focus now is on moving the athletic department forward and best positioning LSU to achieve its full potential.”
LSU will hold a news conference at 9 a.m. ET Friday to discuss the athletic director change.
Woodward drew the ire of Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who publicly criticized him multiple times this week. In a news conference Wednesday, Landry said that Woodward would not be hiring LSU’s next football coach.
On the “Pat McAfee Show” on Thursday, Landry added: “There’s a number of bad contracts that seem to have followed Scott Woodward.”
The flurry of comments from Landry made Woodward’s departure an inevitability. According to a source, the expectation is that Woodward will be paid out the more than $6 million he is owed on his contract.
In a letter addressed to Tiger Nation late Thursday, Woodward said his departure comes “with a heavy heart but also with my typical optimism.”
“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,” Woodward wrote in the letter. “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.
“Our University will always hold a special place in my heart and I will never be too far from LSU.”
Woodward is a longtime college administrator with a political background and an LSU graduate, the type of background suited for this brand of political football. He had been LSU’s athletic director since 2019, a run that included a national title in football, the hiring of Kim Mulkey as the women’s basketball coach and the firing of men’s coach Will Wade.
In the wake of Kelly’s firing, Landry lambasted Woodward so bluntly and publicly that it appeared there was no clear path for him to keep his job.
In a dizzying week, Woodward went from firing Kelly to leaving a job that he had coveted his whole career. At the 2019 news conference introducing him as athletic director, Woodward said: “Thomas Wolfe once said that you can’t go home again. But clearly, they’ve never been to Baton Rouge.”