GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
LSU may not have made the College Football Playoff this season, but there has definitely been an LSU flavor to Notre Dame’s playoff run, relatively speaking.
LSU executive deputy athletic director Verge Ausberry’s son Jaiden Ausberry, a redshirt freshman linebacker, recovered a key fumble in Notre Dame’s 23-10 CFP quarterfinal win over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on Jan. 2.
Ausberry, a New Iberia native who has been one of LSU’s associate athletic directors for 23 years and was a starting LSU inside linebacker from 1987-89, is in Miami tonight for the CFP national semifinal in the Orange Bowl. Notre Dame (13-1) and Penn State (13-2) kick off at 6:30 p.m. on ESPN.
The winner advances to the national championship game in Atlanta on Jan. 20 (6:30 p.m., ESPN) against the winner of Texas (13-2) and Ohio State (12-2), which play in the other semifinal in the Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Texas, on Friday (6:30 p.m., ESPN).
Former LSU safety Ryan Clark (1998-2001) also has a son on Notre Dame’s team – sixth-year senior transfer cornerback Jordan Clark, who had five solo tackles in the 27-17 win over Purdue in the first round of the playoffs on Dec. 20 at Notre Dame. Ausberry, a freshman All-American this season, had three tackles in that game. Both players went to University High on the LSU campus.
Ausberry is fourth on the Fighting Irish in tackles with 53 and in solo stops with 31 through 14 games and two starts. He also has 6.5 tackles for loss, two fumble recoveries, two quarterback hurries and a pass breakup. Clark, who was at Arizona State for his first five years before transferring to South Bend, Indiana, has 25 solo tackles on the season with two for loss, an interception, four pass breakups and a quarterback hurry in 14 games and eight starts.
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Ausberry’s fumble recovery happened with 2:37 to play in the first quarter at the Notre Dame 10-yard line as Georgia was about to score. It kept the game knotted at 0-0. Soon, Notre Dame took a 3-0 lead and was in control at 13-3 at the half.
“You know, I missed that play,” Ausberry said on Tiger Rag Radio Tuesday night. “I don’t know what I was doing. Other people were jumping on me and yelling, ‘That’s Jaiden! That’s Jaiden!’ I looked down and said, ‘Yeah, that is him.'”
Once again, Verge’s son was too fast for him.
“We used to play two-gap, tough, old man-on-man football,” said Ausberry, who played at LSU under one of the best defensive minds in the history of NFL – Bill Arnsparger. After making a name for himself as the Miami Dolphins’ defensive coordinator, Arnsparger was LSU’s head coach from 1984-86.
“Now, it’s a game of playing in space,” Ausberry said. “Jaiden sees things before they happen. That fumble recovery – nobody would’ve seen the ball when I played. His instincts were so fast to get to the ball. He’s very fast. He sees things and does things that can’t be taught. Sometimes I look at him and get a little jealous from when I played. I’ll say, ‘How did you make that play?’ If I would’ve tried that, I would’ve got knocked on my butt. He just said, ‘Dad, I just saw it. I felt it.'”
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Ausberry (6-foot-2, 216 pounds) will be tested tonight as his assignment is Penn State fifth-year senior tight end Tyler Warren (6-6, 260), a projected first half of the first round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. Warren has caught 92 passes for 1,095 yards and six touchdowns this season and has caught 141 passes in his career for 1,701 yards and 17 TDs. He recently won the John Mackey Award that goes to the nation’s best tight end.
“The teams we’ve watched, he’s never really been covered. I’m going to try to cover him and see what he does,” Ausberry told his dad this week.
“Jaiden has great cover skills,” Verge Ausberry said. “He’s up for the challenge. Jaiden is not emotional as a player. Calm, very focused.”
Ausberry has another son in college football. Austin Ausberry is a redshirt sophomore safety at LSU. Also from University High, he transferred to LSU after two seasons at Auburn.
For a time, one of LSU’s highest ranking athletic department official had both kids at other schools, and Ausberry took some heat on social media.
“And I would say, ‘Hey, that’s my children, and they’re independent,'” Ausberry said at the time. “If they wanted to go to LSU, I’d have no problems with it. My time was at LSU, and I love LSU. I’ll always be a Tiger. And my children, they love LSU, too. They grew up here, but they’re going to do their thing. They’re going to where they’re going to be happy.”
So far, it is working for both kids, though Austin is having to wait his turn in football at LSU. He made two tackles in 12 games last season.
The big picture is more important, though. Both sons are studying finance and want to work on Wall Street.
“That was the most important thing to me and their mother,” Ausberry said of his wife and banking executive Cheri Ausberry, whose father Dutch Morial was the first black mayor of New Orleans in the 1970s. “How they do academically outside of football. It’s not a four- or five- or 10-year thing. This is a 40-year decision.”
But a win over Penn State tonight and a national championship game to follow for Jaiden would be something all the Ausberrys remember forever.
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