On July 21, Diana Sabau will walk out of her office at Utah State University for the last time as the university’s director of athletics. She will have served a grand total of 701 days in that role. It won’t go down as the shortest tenure for an athletics director in USU history, but it will be far shorter than her two predecessors — John Hartwell and Scott Barnes — who were both in Logan for seven years.
Even in that short time, though, Sabau has managed to work up quite a legacy. One that will be remembered far beyond the small span she spent at USU.
The beginning of the 2024 calendar year proved to be biggest hurdle for Sabau. Her first widely-seen move as athletics director ended up being firing women’s basketball head coach Kayla Ard in early March 2024. The firing was all but guaranteed given Ard’s 24-90 overall record as coach in four season, it was mostly the manner in which Sabau went about the firing that raised eyebrows. Before Ard had even made her way to the postgame press conference following what would be her final game (a 85-49 loss to Boise State in the Mountain West Conference Tournament), Sabau informed Ard she would be relieved of her duties. Ard ended up relaying that fact during the press conference, clips of which went viral and became national news.
Sabau drew more national headlines and significantly more fire from the fan base in July 2024 when she played a leading role in the dismissal of football head coach Blake Anderson, football director for player development and community Austin Albrecht, deputy AD Jerry Bovee, and senior AD over women’s athletics Amy Crosbie. Both Anderson and Bovee have filed lawsuits against Utah State and named Sabau as a defendant. Bovee’s claims against Sabau include creating a toxic work environment and belittling him before ultimately firing him unjustly.
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Despite a very rough first half of 2024, the remainder of her tenure saw more positive news.
When the reduced Pac-12, at the time consisting of only Oregon State and Washington State, pushed to expand and rebuild, adding the top schools from the Mountain West. Throughout multiple decades’ worth of realignment, dating back to the 1960s, Utah State had been left behind. The Aggies labored through stints of being independent, then in the PCAA/Big West, even the Sun Belt, and then eventually the WAC and later Mountain West. Every time Utah State moved conferences, it was always behind its geographical peers in the western United States.
This time it was finally different.
Utah State got into the Pac-12 ahead of many schools that had gotten into the WAC or Mountain West ahead of the Aggies, such as Wyoming, New Mexico and Nevada. Sabau fully capitalized on the work done in the decade or so prior to her tenure, selling Pac-12 leadership on the growth Utah State had done, particularly with its football and men’s basketball programs.
On September 25, 2024, a day after the official announcement that USU would join the Pac-12, Sabau spoke on the Full Court Press on 106.9 The FAN and delivered what may well be remembered as her mentality for Utah State. The question posed to her was in regard to assumptions that had been (falsely) made in the previous few weeks that the Aggies were not among those the Pac-12 was looking at for expansion.
“We always say, I believe, so why not us? Why not believe (in) Utah State? I’m always going to take that position,” Sabau said.
Getting Utah State into the Pac-12 was one thing, and in all honesty might have happened whether Sabau was the AD of the Aggies or not. The real area where Sabau set herself apart from her predecessors was in fundraising and revenue generation to allow Utah State to spend more. Previous administrations were balling on a budget, punching above their weight financially. And while the coaching hires such as Gary Andersen, Matt Wells, Craig Smith, Ryan Odom and Danny Sprinkle were all highly effective, each left to pursue more lucrative coaching positions.
In June 2024, Utah State announced the “Reach and Rise” campaign, with a stated goal of raising $125 million. It marked the most ambitious fundraising goal in USU history, but it has been seemingly working as the university reports it has received more than $28 million in donations and pledges. Additionally, in the 2024 “A Day of Giving” the athletics department set a new high in donations received, surpassing the previous best by 23%. Fundraising for Name, Image and Likeness payments for athletes also got off the ground under Sabau. In March 2025, Utah State received more than $1 million in donations and pledges in a March Madness themed fundraising event.
With all of those funds brought in, the Aggies were able to extend men’s basketball head coach Jerrod Calhoun, raising his salary from $925,000 to $1.55 million (and nearly $2 million by the end of his contract in 2029). Sabau also hired Bronco Mendenhall, with a starting salary at $2 million, by far the highest for a coach in USU history. Furthermore, the salary pool for assistant coaches rose by $1 million compared to what it had been under the previous coaches.
Utah State is still behind many of its peers in revenue and NIL totals, but its growth in revenue is among the largest in both the Mountain West and the future Pac-12. In the coming years, the financial gap will likely not be as big as it once was.
With Sabau heading out the door, and her legacy all that remains, what is next for Utah State’s athletics department? The first move will be to name an interim director of athletics. Who will that be? Utah State hasn’t even yet decided. The most obvious answer would be Bobby Nash, the deputy AD. When John Hartwell abruptly resigned in 2022, it was deputy AD Bovee who took the reigns until Sabau took over in August 2023. Nash could very well do the same, though reports indicate Nash is also leaving USU.
Among other potential interim ADs are the three senior associate ADs currently on staff, Tony Hearrell (compliance and student-athlete services), Brent Beerends (strategic communications) and Trevor Short (health, wellness and performance).
Utah State will need its interim athletics director to serve for an extended period of time as it could be a while before the next full-time AD is named. The university is currently in the months-long process of hiring a new president, which may not happen until the end of the year. Only when that happens will the process of hiring a new AD can even truly begin, with the new president making the final decisions on candidates and the eventual hire.
Looking a recent precedent, Elizabeth Cantwell was selected as the president for Utah State in May 2023 and took office officially on Aug. 1, 2023. Six days later, Sabau had been selected as the new athletics director with her officially assuming the role two weeks after that on August 21, 2023. That case isn’t an exact comparison to current events because Cantwell was chosen as a successor to Noelle Cockett while the latter was finished her tenure prior to retirement. The next USU president will not have a three-month buildup in which they could put in work behind the scenes in order to hire a new AD within a week of taking office.
