LSU interim athletic director Verge Ausberry will have full authority to hire the Tigers’ next football coach, and he told reporters Friday that a search committee has already been formed to identify Brian Kelly’s replacement.

Ausberry, a former LSU linebacker who has been connected to the university for more than 30 years, is now leading the athletics department after former athletics director Scott Woodward and the school mutually agreed to part ways Thursday.

“We’re going to hire the best football coach there is,” Ausberry said in a news conference Friday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “That’s our job. 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 teams at LSU. No substitute.”

Woodward’s departure came a day after Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry told reporters that Woodward wouldn’t be involved in hiring Kelly’s replacement, saying he’d rather let President Donald Trump do it.

The Tigers fired Kelly on Sunday, a day after they lost to Texas A&M 49-25 at home to drop to 5-3.

While some have suggested that the political controversy surrounding the LSU athletics department shakeup might scare away some potential candidates, Ausberry was confident the Tigers will find the right coach.

“We’re LSU,” Ausberry said. “This place is not broken. The athletic department is not broken. We win.”

Ausberry, the executive deputy athletic director under Woodward, is a member of the search committee, along with LSU Board of Supervisors chairman Scott Ballard and other board members and donors.

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to select the next LSU president on Tuesday, but Ballard told reporters that wouldn’t affect the search for a new football coach.

McNeese State President Wade Rousse, University of Alabama Provost James Dalton and former University of Arizona President Robert Robbins are finalists for the position.

“We’re not slowing down for that,” Ballard said. “Verge is going to move forward and knows what he needs to do. But, depending on how that works out and when the new president starts, the new president will absolutely have input and hopefully hit the ground running.”

Landry criticized Woodward for agreeing to a 10-year, $95 million contract with Kelly that included incentives and which left LSU on the hook for a $54 million buyout under the terms of the deal.

In a statement Monday, Woodward said the school would “continue to negotiate his separation and will work toward a path that is better for both parties.”

Landry held a meeting at the governor’s mansion Sunday night to discuss the legalities of firing Kelly and who would pay his hefty buyout.

In his news conference at the state capitol in Baton Rouge on Wednesday, Landry suggested that LSU’s new football coach would have a merit-based contract that wouldn’t include a massive buyout. Ausberry said he was told to find the best coach and not worry about the contract’s parameters.

Woodward, who had been LSU’s athletics director since 2019, is owed a buyout of more than $6 million, sources told ESPN.

“The governor had a right to be concerned and we’re working towards solutions,” Board of Supervisors member John Carmouche told reporters Friday. “Everything’s on the table. But let me make it clear: The state has never, and taxpayers have never paid for a coach and never will.”

More than anything, Ausberry said LSU has to get its football program back on track. He walked the field during the third and fourth quarters of last week’s game and saw that Tiger Stadium was half empty.

“It’s not a good thing,” Ausberry said. “[Former Ohio State football coach] Woody Hayes always said the worst word in the dictionary was ‘apathy.’ This program cannot have apathy, in no way or means. We have to win. We have to be successful.”

PHILADELPHIA — Michael Vick and DeSean Jackson shared an affectionate embrace at midfield — Jackson pulled a hood over his mouth to hide his message to Vick — after a game at the same NFL stadium they called home for five years together as teammates with the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Pro Bowl players are now improbably linked as HBCU coaches, taking a career path that would have shocked Vick and Jackson when they each shined in the NFL.

“I never thought I’d look across the field and watch him coach,” Vick said. “I know vice versa for him. It was just a really cool moment, a surreal moment. You just never know what life is going to put in front of you.”

Jackson got the better of Vick in their first meeting as historically Black college coaches, thanks in large part to Amir Anderson‘s blocked punt for a score that sent Delaware State to a 27-20 win over Norfolk State on Thursday night.

This was no ordinary regular-season win. Jackson had the game circled on his office schedule, and the Hornets carried him off the field on their shoulders as if they had just won a Super Bowl, an appreciation of the win and how — much like Vick — he has raised the profile of HBCU programs.

“I’m just proud of, man, both of us,” Jackson said. “We’re in a position where we’re inspiring, changing young men’s lives at HBCUs. Man, it don’t get no better than that.”

Kaiden Bennett threw a 24-yard TD pass to Tahmir Ellis for the Hornets, and James Jones scored on a 76-yard run in the fourth quarter to seal the latest conference win for Jackson’s team.

Vick and Jackson were the signature attractions for each program headed into a rare nationally televised weeknight game for HBCU programs at an NFL stadium.

Both players keyed the Eagles’ run to the 2010 NFC East championship, where a banner was raised at the top of Lincoln Financial Field. Vick, the strong-armed, left-handed QB, and Jackson electrified the NFL that season when they connected on an 88-yard touchdown pass against Washington and a 91-yarder against Dallas to help both players earn Pro Bowl nods.

“Man, just the energy when I walked on the field, smelling the grass, it just went through my veins,” Jackson said.

Jackson, who won a Super Bowl with the Rams and retired after the 2022 season, made the pitch to move the game from campus to Philadelphia. Former NFL stars Hugh Douglas, Marshawn Lynch and Cam Newton, and Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham were at the Linc, and thousands of fans — more than each program would average at a home game — waited out some early rain before Delaware State gave them a jolt.

Norfolk State led 6-3 — the good times started when Otto Kuhns hit JJ Evans for a dynamite 13-yard score — when it punted deep in its own territory. Anderson got a hand on the punt and scooped the ball in the end zone for a 10-6 lead that Delaware State took into halftime.

Kuhns and Evans broke out that old Vick-to-Jackson dynamic on a 70-yard score that pulled the Spartans to 19-13 late in the fourth. Kuhns threw for 311 yards and three touchdowns, and Evans finished with five catches for 124 yards. DreSean Kendrick had nine catches for 112 yards.

“Having a chance to work with guys like JJ, guy like DreSean, guys in that locker room, being part of that HBCU culture is extremely cool,” Vick said. “I look forward to better days.”

Patrick Fisher-Butler kicked field goals of 30 and 26 yards for the Hornets (6-3, 2-0 Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference).

With emotions perhaps charged playing in front of a big crowd under the lights, the teams got into a scuffle at the end of the third, and Delaware State offensive lineman Isaiah Cook was ejected for throwing a punch.

Jackson’s and Vick’s missions are clear — use their celebrity, connections, and football smarts to resuscitate two long-suffering programs in the HBCU community much in the way Deion Sanders did at Jackson State on his way to a Power Four program at Colorado.

The 45-year-old Vick, who starred in college at Virginia Tech and was a four-time Pro Bowler in 13 NFL seasons, is off to a rocky start in his rookie season.

Norfolk State, with an enrollment of about 5,100 students, is 1-8 and has lost seven straight games. Vick recently fired some assistant defensive coaches as he tries to revive a Spartans’ program that has made only one playoff appearance since moving to FCS in 1997.

Jackson has orchestrated a rapid turnaround at Delaware State, with an enrollment of about 6,500 students, that already includes its first conference win since 2022. The Hornets beat rival North Carolina Central 35-26 last week for their first win in Durham since 1977.

“We had [eight] games before this, and every game, it was hard not to think about this game,” Jackson said.

After Thursday night’s blowout win over Tulane, UTSA coach Jeff Traylor said his team felt “extremely disrespected” entering the contest due to comments made by Green Wave coach Jon Sumrall and quarterback Jake Retzlaff.

Sumrall had told reporters in New Orleans earlier in the week that UTSA pumped noise into the Alamodome and that other coaches in the American Conference told him that the speakers aren’t turned off during Roadrunners games. Tulane practiced this week with crowd noise and loud music to prepare for the trip to San Antonio.

“I think they may pipe some in through the speakers,” Sumrall said. “I don’t think it’s legal. I don’t think anybody’s investigating it. We’ve just got to be ready to deal with it. … That’s helped them create a home-field advantage.”

Traylor took issue with those comments after his team’s 48-26 victory.

“A coach that said we basically cheated the last six years, which disrespects everything we’ve done the last six years, in my opinion,” Traylor said.

UTSA improved to 22-0 in regular-season conference home games under Traylor.

Traylor said Sumrall’s comments seemed “a little more personal.”

“I just told my guys, ‘Man, we’re already living in his head,'” he said. “I wish I worked for a boss that let me do all those things [with noise]. Our crowd’s loud, and our band’s loud.”

Traylor said he likes Sumrall but thinks the comments even made UTSA’s band cautious about playing music during Thursday’s game.

“Our band director was scared to death to play with the band,” he said. “It’s probably one of the main reasons we haven’t lost a game here. Those dudes rock every time we’re here.”

Traylor also took issue with Retzlaff, a transfer from BYU, doing a miked-up interview with ESPN before the game. Retzlaff had helped BYU to a win over Colorado in the 2024 Alamo Bowl in the same building, and when asked about UTSA’s unbeaten run there during the interview, said: “I’ll tell you what: I’m 1-0 in this stadium. So something’s got to give, and it’s not going to be me.”

He was benched after throwing two interceptions in Thursday’s loss.

“A quarterback for them that disrespected us, like unbelievable, miked up before the game,” Traylor said.

The coach also mentioned “spoiled-rotten media” and “fair-weather” fans in his postgame comments.

“We shut ’em up for a week,” Traylor said.