The athletic director search committee announced, at its meeting Monday, a final pool of six candidates to replace Athletic Director Skip Bertman.
The two internal candidates remaining in the field are LSU senior associate athletic directors Verge Ausberry and Herb Vincent. The committee added Vincent to the final pool after the members went into executive session.
“There was a broad consensus to add Herb Vincent to the list,” said Paul M. Hebert Law Center Chancellor Jack Weiss.
LSU Senior Associate Athletic Director Mark Ewing was not in the final pool.
East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Doug Moreau and former St. Louis University Athletic Director Joe Yates, two candidates the committee considered before Monday’s meeting, were also not included in the final pool.
Moreau was a finalist for the position in 2001 when Bertman was hired.
The committee’s list includes three new applicants: Joe Alleva, Dave Hart, Jr. and Rob Mullens.
Alleva is the director of athletics at Duke and was recently involved in hiring the Blue Devils’ new football coach, David Cutcliffe. Search committee member Dan Parker said Alleva is respected in higher education and is a nationally recognized leader in collegiate athletics.
Hart, who is currently an advisor to the Atlantic Coast Conference and commissioner John Swofford, was director of athletics at Florida State from 1995-2007.
Rob Mullens has been deputy director of athletics at Kentucky since 2006. He has been with the program since 2002 and currently manages a 22-sport, $65 million athletic department budget. Mullens also worked in the University of Maryland athletic department for six years prior to going to Kentucky.
Craig Angelos, director of athletics at Florida Atlantic, rounds out the external candidates for the job. Under Angelos’ leadership, Florida Atlantic entered the Sun Belt Conference and moved to Division I-A from Division I-AA in 2003.
“It’s a great field to choose from,” Weiss said. “We’ve got two strong internal candidates and four outstanding outside candidates, and I’m confident that we’ll have a first-rate athletic director at LSU when the process is over with.”
One candidate left out of the final pool was Greg McGarity, executive associate athletic director at Florida.
“There had been a lot of rumors about Mr. McGarity,” Weiss said. “It was Mr. Parker’s firm’s recommendation that the ones they included in their initial list of five – later expanded to six – were the most outstanding of the group.”
The search committee will interview the six candidates beginning Wednesday at 8 a.m. Weiss said the interview process, which will take place at the Law Center, will be open to the public, and the committee hopes to have its recommendation for athletic director by Wednesday afternoon.
—-Contact Rachel Whittaker at [email protected]