Former LSU baseball coach Skip Bertman won five national championships before taking over the reigns as athletics director. LSU fans hope Bertman can duplicate his success from the diamond to the entire LSU athletic program.
JD: Were you planning to retire from coaching before the athletics director position became available?
SB: I was planning to retire anyways. I was going to work for Joe Dean as associate athletic director mostly in charge of fund-raising. Also, Dale Brown had fixed me up to go on the professional speakers tour with the Washington Speakers Bureau, which he had done since he retired. But he was kind of winding down. I thought I would do some professional speaking and help Joe troubleshoot and raise some money. But the chancellor asked me, “Instead of doing that would you consider being the AD?” I thought I could do some things that would help the University and I knew there was a good football, basketball and baseball coach in place.
JD: Why did you decide to retire?
SB: Actually, I thought I had accomplished what I set out to accomplish, but I was growing weary of the travel. Like for instance, you would leave on Thursday after classes then you would practice Thursday night in say Starkville or Oxford. And then you would wait all day Friday for a game at night. Then you wait all day Saturday for another game at night then you would play Sunday. Then you bus back after the game and get back at like 12 or 1 o’clock Sunday night. I was growing weary of that, even the airplane trips to South Carolina, Arkansas or some of the other ones. They were too long. I was kind of getting bored with the time not the baseball.
JD: What do you miss about being a coach?
SB: I miss the relationships with players and talking baseball. You know you can go months without talking about baseball or any other sport. You are doing mostly the administrative stuff. But I miss talking professional baseball or college baseball. On the other hand, the travel is much better. Now if you travel with the football or basketball team, you fly there, you fly back. You don’t stay the whole time like you do when you’re coaching. I am enjoying it.
JD: How have you dealt with the transition from LSU icon to being in a position where you make some unpopular decisions?
SB: Well, one of the things abut being the AD that is negative is that every decision you make won’t effect everybody positively. Some will like it, some won’t whether its popular or not. Even if it’s 90 percent popular, still 10 percent of the people are upset about the decision. But on the positive side, you can do a lot of things that’s better for LSU. We’ve done a lot of those. A lot of things that have been done that are better for LSU, but they aren’t necessarily better for one fan, six fans or 10 fans. You know leaders have to lead. They have to do what they feel is right. They can’t worry about it. On the other hand, I’ve been pretty good about servicing people. I have answered thousands of e-mails, returned phone calls and probably put more information out in the streets the last eight months than in the history of LSU.
JD: Do you find this is an exciting time to be athletic director with all the changes being made and the upcoming inflow of funds?
SB: I think if we would have just continued to do what we were doing and raise the ticket prices every four years and scraped and saved then raise them again the next four years, the football and basketball team would be up and down, baseball would be good and track would be real good. None of the other sports except softball could move up. I just didn’t want to take the job under those conditions. I wanted to be able to shoot where all 20 teams could compete. I don’t want the status quo even though it would have been pretty easy. I like the fact that we are risk takers that we’re making changes and the university will go on for 30 or 40 years after we all leave. Then after those guys leave, another 30, 40 years and beyond. The changes that are made are made for the future. Once you’re zoned into that, a lot of changes can be made and you just have to move that along one at a time.
JD: What’s the most exciting part of the job?
SB: I tell you the most challenging and exhilarating part for me is coaching the coaches. You know getting coaches to have peak performance levels for their athletes. We’ve got a great bunch of guys and that’s fun for me to interact with them and give advice.
JD: Lastly, what’s your predicted finish for the football team?
SB: I would say that the loss to Florida won’t hurt us because we may end up with two losses like Auburn or Arkansas for example. It’s very likely that if we beat both of those teams, we get the edge like Arkansas did when they beat us last year. I think we’ll win the West and play Georgia again in the Georgia Dome. That will be great ballgame like it was here and I really think that will be a watershed event for LSU and that will crash through the pressure barrier and the kids will realize that they can be good. I think that we are going to end up at 10 and 2 going into that Georgia game.