Utah State in search of new athletic director as Sabau leaves for Maryland
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- Utah State athletic director Diana Sabau, right, helps introduce Bronco Mendenhall as USU football head coach on Dec. 9, 2024, in Logan.
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- Diana Sabau
Utah State University will again search for an athletic director after Diana Sabau is leaving her role to be senior deputy athletic director at the University of Maryland.
Utah State announced her departure Wednesday morning after media reports surfaced Tuesday about the pending move. Her last day at USU is July 21. Hero Sports reports Sabau will owe USU a buyout fee of $500,000 as she had three years left in a five-year contract that paid her $619,000 annually.
The university touted Sabau’s leadership in moving USU into the new Pac-12 Conference, hiring coaches Bronco Mendenhall and Jerrod Calhoun, and Aggie athletes reaching a school record 3.57 overall GPA in the spring 2025 semester.
It’s the second time in three years that Utah State will be hiring both a university president and athletic director, and whoever is next inherits some unique circumstances in the wake of federal notices and departmental firings.
Seven-year AD John Hartwell resigned on Nov. 1, 2022, and three weeks later school president Noelle Cockett announced she’d step down from the role effective July 1, 2023. USU hired Elizabeth Cantwell in May 2023 to take over as president, while Jerry Bovee served as interim athletic director for nine months until Sabau assumed the role in August 2023.
Cantwell left after just 21 months to take the same job at Washington State, and now Sabau is out the door to Maryland after 23 months.
All this while Utah State faced a 2024 notice from the Department of Justice over “substantial non-compliance” of Title IX that came four years after USU signed an agreement with the DOJ to improve its response to allegations of sexual assault and harassment.
Head football coach Blake Anderson was fired in July 2024 amid this environment over allegations that he personally interviewed a potential victim in a sexual assault alleged to have been committed by a football player and, an investigation found, delayed suspending that player.
Bovee, the former Weber State athletic director who went back to his alma mater in a deputy AD role in 2019 and later assumed the interim AD role, was also fired along with senior women administrator Amy Crosbie over findings in the same investigation.
Anderson and Bovee have both said publicly they followed university policy in reporting the allegations and deny wrongdoing. Anderson has sued USU for $15 million.
Outside of the investigation into the alleged sexual assault, Bovee alleged Sabau created a hostile work environment for him, cut his salary and informally took away his work duties, a complaint he submitted to human resources four days before his firing in the summer of 2024, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Bovee’s claims include that administrative processes were not followed during his firing. He filed a formal grievance via the Utah Protection of Public Employees Act, and then in January of this year filed a lawsuit against Utah State seeking backpay and damages of $300,000.
His lawsuit also alleges Sabau moved departmental messaging to the encrypted messaging app Signal to avoid open records laws; The Salt Lake Tribune reports USU did not deny using Signal but maintains the university adheres to public records laws.
Sabau told The Salt Lake Tribune she had no agenda to push people out and that investigations were initiated before her hire.
The Aggies, meanwhile, seem to have a handle on the coaches who lead their headlining programs. Sabau hired Bronco Mendenhall — the former BYU, Virginia and New Mexico head coach known as a bit of a fixer, which he did at BYU in 2005 after similar off-the-field allegations and losing records hurt the Cougars — as USU’s head football coach in December 2024.
The men’s basketball team continues to win despite hiring four coaches over a six-year period; Bovee hired Danny Sprinkle while interim AD, Sprinkle left after one season and Sabau brought in Jerrod Calhoun before the 2024-25 season. Despite that, USU has made the NCAA Tournament in five of the last seven seasons, including in Calhoun’s first campaign.
Utah State said in Wednesday’s news release that interim president Al Smith “is focused on identifying a strong interim leader who will bring stability to the program and support USU’s continued momentum.”
