Speaker 1: The Raging Cagens will be looking for a new athletic
director for the first time in nearly a decade.
Speaker 2: Let's discuss it here on Rage and Runnow.
Speaker 1: What's good, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode
of Rage and Rundown All Caguns all the time.
Speaker 2: I'm your guy.
Speaker 1: You'r Marcus Fitzpatrick, but you know you can always call
me fits. And in today's episode, we will be talking about,
quite literally the biggest story of the UO athletic department
since we've started the show, and it is the departure
of athletics director doctor Brian Maggart. To be candid, I
was at home. I was in the middle of a
workout actually, and I checked my phone on on social
media's and I saw that I believe it was college
ad had tweeted out that Louisiana's ad would be leaving
for Missouri. So I made a few phone calls and
was able to confirm the news and was able to
eventually break it. Ross Dellinger surely thereafter came out with
some information as well. So from there it became an
official story when the Raging Cajuns officially announced it and
then Shortly thereafter, Missouri would also announce that doctor Magaret
would be leaving the program after nine years of running
the athletic department. He heads back to Missouri, a place
that he had been at for twenty two years, essentially
the bulk of his professional career in athletics, and he
will be serving as the deputy a D and also
as the COO of that athletic department. So, first of all,
congratulations to him in that, But there are a lot
of things that we have to discuss in this. You know,
I won't waste any time with all of that, you know,
Like I said, the announcement came out that he would
be leaving, this was He's been a part of the
program since twenty seventeen and took the athletic department to
a lot of different positions that were transformative. Obviously, with
the rev share and the NIL era coming in that
has changed a lot of things. But the renovation of
our Lady Elwer Stadium, the raising of funds up to
I believe thirty million dollars to be able to continue
to retain players and continue to grow the athletic facilities
around UL Athletics, that's been a huge part of what
he's done. From what we have heard from the press
release that the Athletic Department sent out, Trey Fraser will
be named as the interim and a national search will begin.
I'll have some thoughts on that a little bit later
in the show. Why Missouri is the big question that
I know a lot of people would be in, and
to me, it makes the most sense.
Speaker 2: He has a PhD from there. He originally graduated.
Speaker 1: From Kansas State, where he had two degrees originally, and
that's about four hours away from Missouri. He just his
daughter just had a child, so he has a granddaughter.
Now he's a grandfather. So to be able to have
the opportunity to be around family and to be able
to be in a great position because if I'm not mistaken,
I think the COO and also the person that he's
assuming the role for is retiring from that position. So
it was kind of like the perfect storm. Everything came
all together for him to be able to move forward
and have that opportunity. In his statement he put out
as I'm reading through it, one of the things that
he said was that it would take something extremely special
for him to have left Louisiana because like I said,
they had been here for nine years, and what better
thing for it to be something special than to be
closer to your family and go back to the place
that you originally worked at for twenty two years to
potentially put yourself in a much better position in your
professional career. And obviously, like this also comes after he
was named a member of the College Football Playoff Committee
back in March, and so it kind of feels like
the worst time in for UIL because it's like he
would have been on that committee and every time his
name would have been mentioned, the Raging Cajun's logo, the
brand of Louisiana would have been a part of that.
And now it's going to be back to the SEC
as a team like Missouri.
Speaker 2: So that does.
Speaker 1: Phil Sour, I'm sure for you that may be watching
this episode, But from a perspective of just him as
a human being, I totally understand why he would have
done it, and I honestly probably would have done similar
things in this position. So it doesn't sound like at
all that he was leaving this place because he was unhappy.
He was very much happy in his position here and
there were things that he was working towards you know,
recently the baseball program has been raising funds to try
to get themselves a renovated clubhouse and all of these
different other renovations that have been down the line. So
it wasn't that the position that he was in was
very bad, but it kind of just seems like the
perfect storm for him and then the worst storm and
worst timing for Louisiana as they're getting ready for football
season and just under a month I believe.
Speaker 2: So in his.
Speaker 1: Time at Uel, Louisiana had eight consecutive Bowl appearances, five
Sun Belt Championship Game appearances to Sun Belt titles, and
then six CFP rankings in that time.
Speaker 2: So it's almost that you could say that.
Speaker 1: Some of Louisiana in athletics was elevated in different instances.
You think about the hire of Billy Napier, which was
one of the slam dunk hires that he was able
to get. You think about him hiring Jerry Glasgow, and
this also came after the fire rent of Mark Hutsmith,
and also the softball program as well, with everything that
happened with that as well.
Speaker 2: So to get those two hires was really big.
Speaker 1: I know recently the last two hires that he has
brought in corners White being an outside higher in the
n Allison habits, even though she is a Cajun herself,
being someone that was hired from the outside and was
not already in the department. Connus White was in his
first season, it wasn't at its best, but he has time.
The first two seasons under coach Habit have not been
their best, but I'm sure that they're going to continue
to give her backing to be able to get some
time behind that. Whether that will come to fruition and change,
it is to be seen. But he was able to
do or was able to see through a lot of
transition while being the athletic director of the Raging Cagens.
The athletic department had twenty one Sunbelt Championships, twenty three
n C DOUAA appearances, and was able to be in
position where every single year you could almost see that
UL was going to be competitive softball, baseball, football, the
season that basketball had a couple of years back, so
you could see at that time that things were continuing
to elevate slowly. Now, like I said earlier, the rev
share the NIL has changed a lot of things, and
the landscape has really changed drastically over time. And so
whoever comes in to be the next athletic director, that's
going to be a main priority for them that they're
going to have to focus on is how do they
work through this era to continue to not necessarily be
able to raise millions and millions of dollars to try
to go and get a forty and fifty million dollar roster,
but how do you get enough money to maintain and say, hey,
we can get a guy for one more year or
two more years because of the funds that we may have.
We talked about the facilities renovations that they've been a
part of, the sixty five million dollars stadium renovation of
Our Lady of Lords, the thirty million dollars raised, the
fifteen million dollar naming rights deal that they had UL
Athletics doesn't look necessarily like it did eight years ago. So,
like I said, kudos to doctor Magaret as he will
now move forward in his career. But now Louisiana is
tasked with trying to make what is going to be
a very very important hire, the most important hire and
quite some time. And it's something that they have not
been a position in in almost ten years. You had
a different president at the time, you were transitioning at
a different era of college athletics, and so it'll be
interesting to see. So I'm going to take a quick
time out and when we come back, we'll talk about
what it's going to be important that Louisiana will have
to look forward to or look for in their next
athletic director. We'll discuss it when we come back here
on Rage and Rundown. Hey, guys, thank you so much
for tuning into another episode of Rage and Rundown. We're
going to get back into the action in just a second,
but before we do, if you're watching this episode on YouTube,
please do me a favor. Please like it, share it,
and leave a comment down below, but most importantly, make
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follow the podcast feed, rate the show, and leave us
a review, because that's going to help us get in
front of more raging Cajun fans just like yourself. So
we talked about before the break everything that doctor Magaret
did before his departure, and now he is moving forward
to Missouri. So now what are we looking at in
the future. The interim. As I said before, the interim
AD will be Trey Fraser, who has already been wearing
multiple paths, so he just gained another hat. He's been
the deputy athletic Director. He has been the executive director
of the Raging Cagent's Athletic Fund or the RCAF for short,
and I think having him in that position, obviously, you know,
brings about a lot of stability, but he is a
person that comes with experience even before he got into
the position that he is assuming now as interim. So
if you look back, he's been a part of programs
like Missouri UAB, Virginia Tech, Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, and Conference USA,
and what he primarily was focused a lot on was
was fundraising. During his five year stint at UAB, he
served as Senior Director of Development, where he helped complete
capital projects for the football Operations Center it was twenty
two and a half million dollars, the basketball practice facility
seven and a half million dollars, the soccer stadium at
one point five the track and field facilities at two million,
and he additionally helped raise a school record nine point
five million dollars in his first season in twenty twenty one,
Fraser and his team raised a school record two point
seven million dollars for the annual fund.
Speaker 2: So that's just a little bit about what he was
able to do.
Speaker 1: He also did some things in projects at Virginia Tech.
He had multiple roles inside the Virginia Tech Athletic fun
He was back there during twenty seventeen, so again this
was a different era when a lot of that happened.
But the program was instantly successful, as the annual giving
increase by seventy three percent from nine point eight million
to seventeen million, which was at the time in all
time records. So it just goes to show that the
person that you're adding in this has a landscape of
what it's going to take from a financial standpoint, which
we know that budget issues and things is what you
will has been faced a lot with, especially over the
past year and some change. So it's going to be
important that him being in this position, whether he gets
the position or full time, or if this is just
him being a bridge person to whoever is next, I
think that that's going to be truly important that they
focused on that. So in the press release, it said
that a national search will be conducted, which is what
they always say whenever positions are in transition, whether it's
a hiring firing, all of those things like that. The
needs that they're going to be needing to focus on,
Like I said, you're going to need someone that has
fundraising experience. They're going to have to understand nil revenue sharing,
commitment to football, to baseball, to softball, to your big
programs that you're focused on, to conference realignment knowledge, and
all of those things like that. So those are going
to be some of the biggest challenges that whoever this
next ad is is going to inherit. So you're going
to have to be able to maintain football success because
football is the front door to not just your athletic department,
but in most cases your university. Because when football is
able to be successful, people want to go to winning schools.
That means your enrollment goes up, so now you're having
more students on campus.
Speaker 2: It all collectively works hand in hand together. Budget challenges.
Speaker 1: Like we said, UL has been faced with so many
challenges that we've talked about on this show before that
I've talked about on my day job at KTC. They're
going to have to figure out how can we do
more with less? That is what this athletic director is
going to be faced with. The revenue sharing. Like I said,
how do you be able to figure out how do
we divvy up enough money to where student athletes can
get their piece of the pie, but to where it's
not enough of a big enough slice to where you're
lacking in other areas so to speak. And then just
keeping facilities competitive so to speak as well. Like I mentioned,
the time in of this is probably one of the
most interesting because you're right before football season. The recruiting
cycle of football season has kind of simmered down, Like
I said in the past episode, like I've heard from
conversations that I had, football may be done with their
twenty twenty seven class that they have done baseball and softball.
Speaker 2: Baseball for sure has filled out their roster.
Speaker 1: Softball is probably about as close as they're going to
get to filling out their roster.
Speaker 2: Basketball is complete with both of those teams.
Speaker 1: So from an athletic standpoint, you're in a a midway
point where as you're getting closer to the fall, it's
going to be important to have somebody in position. So
we'll have to see how quickly Louisiana is actually going
to move. In my opinion, I've presented a lot of
information in this episode, but in my opinion, I feel
like having Trey Fraser assume the role full time as
an athletic director would not be something that's completely out
of question or something that wouldn't make sense. I've read
to you how he's been, you know, knowledgeable around what
it takes to fundraise, He's been around in these past
couple of years trying to navigate the nil rev Share era.
He has a young mind, and he has experience in
being around doctor Maggert and seeing the vision that he
was carrying out. Now he could potentially be somebody that
carries out that same vision as he assumes a potential
new role in his career. But obviously, President Ramesh Kalaru
and I'm suring whatever committee that he's going to formulate
together will sit down, they'll evaluate what they need to do,
and then they will be trying to hopefully make a
decision before the Cajuns open up their season on September fifth.
The football program that is opens up their season on
September fifth against lamar So. Doctor Brian Maggert is moving
forward in his career and is heading back to Missouri
to take over as Deputy AD and COO of that program.
Trey Fraser will serve as the Raging Cagents Interim AD
for the time being. So that's going to wrap up
this episode of Raging Rundown. If you've made it to
this point in the episode, thank you so much. If
you're watching on YouTube, please do me a favor. Like
the video, share it, leave a comment down below let
me know what do you feel like Brian Maggert's legacy
was at UIL. Let's discuss it all down in the comments.
If you're listening, please follow the podcast feed, rate the show,
and leave us a review, because that's going to help
us get in front of more Raging Cajen fans. Just
like yourself. I'm your guys, You're Marcus Fitzpatrick. We'll see
you guys next time.