LSU AD Has Simple Message For SEC Teams Amid Lane Kiffin's Comments

In today's age of college athletics, Verge Ausberry wants schools to work together

Lane Kiffin and Verge Ausberry engage together during Kiffin's introductory press conference in 2025 | Matthew Hinton-Imagn Images

There is always tension on the field, court or track when SEC teams meet, but the tension between LSU and Ole Miss over Lane Kiffin's new job in Baton Rouge has only grown over the last six months.

It continued to grow when he talked in a Vanity Fair article about recruiting differences between the two schools, saying the families of some recruits would not want their kids moving to Oxford, Miss., and that Baton Rouge, La. had better campus diversity and "feels like there's no segregation."

LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry, who got the job on Nov. 4 of last year, about four weeks before Kiffin was hired, called for unity among SEC leadership.

Ausberry's message about unity

Verge Ausberry and Lane Kiffin stand together at the 2025 Texas Bowl | Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images

"It's not about the other place you were at before, the other schools in this conference," Ausberry said in an interview with ESPN. "In the SEC we have to be one.

"Every other organization from NASCAR, to the NFL, NBA: they're one. We fight each other on the fields: Saturday nights, basketball games, baseball weekends, track and field, that's when we compete. After that, this is one. When you start breaking up and doing our own things, that hurts our conference."

With the direction that college sports are moving, it's important for conferences to work together while each athletic director is taking care of their own school. Like Ausberry said, it needs to be treated as a professional league so the differences don't cause a schism.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said at the SEC spring meetings that this need for unity is something that is well understood among university officials.

"I thought the last couple days with the leadership of our presidents and chancellors was very open, very honest, very much focused on how we collaborate together with the right kind of right frame of mind, right attitude, very positive, knowing there's a lot of challenges ahead," Sankey said.

Even new Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding understands this, and is not taking to the public any spiteful comments on Kiffin. It seems Golding understands the need for unity as much as anyone else.

“I really don’t have a response to it,” Golding said. “I mean, obviously, there’s a Lane side for us that we’re buddies and our friends, and then there’s professional side that I have to get on his ass, you know?

"I think anybody that’s been to Oxford, you know, knows that’s not where we’re at right now," Golding added.

The SEC and its member schools need unity to stay together through the changes in college athletics and legislation. Ausberry's public comments on it is a positive step to reaching unity.

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