Ausberry: LSU’s opening win over Miami more than just on-field success

NEW ORLEANS – There were a lot of reasons that a season-opening win over Miami Sunday night in Arlington, Texas, was big for the LSU athletic program.

“Eight million TV sets had that game on Sunday,” LSU deputy athletic director Verge Ausberry said Tuesday at the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation Quarterback Club presented by Home Bank at Rock ‘n’ Bowl. “About 1.6 million (people) live in (the New Orleans DMA); we were on one in four TV sets. That’s why we do this type of games.

“When you have that many people watching LSU, we couldn’t pay for that air time Sunday night. We’re the talk of ESPN right now, especially what we did on the field.”

Besides the eyeballs watching TV sets, Ausberry noted that the LSU football roster includes 20 New Orleans-area players.

Ausberry handles all football scheduling. Last month, the university announced a home-and-home series with Clemson in 2025-26.

“I’ve done a good mixture of (future) games – home and home and neutral site games,” Ausberry said. “We want to get teams in here that are attractive for our fans to see. We just added Army (in 2023).”

Ausberry expects the Southeastern Conference to remain with eight conference games, but made another plea for the conference to reconsider how it schedules league games against cross-divisional teams.

“Our stand is we have eight games in the conferences,” Ausberry said. “Other conferences have nine. We have to play another Power 5 school non-conference. If you go to nine games, then we need to look at the permanent opponents also.”

LSU has Florida as its permanent East Division opponent.

Besides the success on the football field Sunday night, LSU had numerous other events in the Dallas-Fort Worth area this weekend, including president F. King Alexander speaking to 2,000 high school students.

“Overall, it was a good weekend,” Ausberry said.