Utah St. hires Big Ten’s Sabau as athletic director

Pete Thamel, ESPNAug 7, 2023, 01:43 PM ET

Utah State has hired former Big Ten deputy commissioner Diana Sabau as the school’s next athletic director, the school announced on Monday night.

Sabau oversees all 28 sports for the Big Ten and was the former senior deputy to athletic director Gene Smith at Ohio State, where her duties included being the sport administrator for the football program from 2017 through March of 2021.

Sabau succeeds interim athletic director Jerry Bovee, who took over in November after John Hartwell resigned.

Sabau takes over at the Mountain West school at a fascinating moment, as the instability of the Pac-12 — which has just four remaining schools — has created opportunities for the league. She departs the Big Ten in the wake of a hectic week that saw the league add both Oregon and Washington as members.

Sabau brings nearly three decades of experience in college athletics. In the four years she was Ohio State football’s sport administrator, the school won the Big Ten title all four times and she helped with the coaching transition from Urban Meyer to Ryan Day at the end of the 2018 season. Her roles at Ohio State included every facet of working in athletics administration — revenue generation, partnerships, sport oversight, branding, communications, television liaison and working directly with student-athletes.

Her role at the Big Ten, which began in March of 2021, included departmental oversight of football administration, basketball administration, hockey administration, Olympic sports administration and officiating administration.