LOGAN – After serving for not quite two years as the athletics director at Utah State, Diana Sabau will reportedly be moving on to become the deputy AD at the University of Maryland according to collegead.com.
Sabau officially took over on August 7, 2023 and led the athletics department through an eventful time in its history. Less than a year into her tenure, she played a leading role in the dismissal of football head coach Blake Anderson, deputy AD Jerry Bovee, and senior AD over women’s athletics Aimee Crosbie.
Both Anderson and Bovee filed lawsuits against the university, with Bovee naming Sabau specifically in his wrongful termination and whistleblower lawsuit.
Mere months after those firings made national headlines, Sabau led USU to one of its highest points in history as the school received an invite to the Pac-12.
Throughout the eventful months, Sabau also directed significant fundraising efforts, including the Reach and Rise campaign seeking to raise $125 million. One year after the campaign’s start, it has raised $28 million toward that goal.
During her tenure, she hired, and later extended, men’s basketball head coach Jerrod Calhoun along with hiring women’s head coach Wes Brooks. She also secured an extension for women’s soccer head coach Manny Martins and spearheaded major renovations to the women’s soccer field. Her most recent coaching hire brought in former BYU, Virginia and New Mexico head coach Bronco Mendenhall to rebuild USU’s football program.
In moving to Maryland, Sabau will return to the Big Ten, where she has her roots as an athletics administrator. She previously held a role as the senior deputy athletics director at Ohio State University and later as the chief sports officer for the Big Ten.
Sabau was hired at Utah State in a time of transition. The university had just named Elizabeth Cantwell as its next university president and one of her first acts on the job was to hire Sabau as the school’s director of athletics. The university finds itself in a similar situation once again. Cantwell left for Washington State in February and the Utah State Board of Regents is in the process of narrowing down candidates for the university’s next president. Once again, whomever is chosen will need to select a new director of athletics.
