The man with the plans – The UNKNOWN TIGERS

For all the great athletes LSU produces, having one return as a top-level employee who’s not a coach is rare.

So rare that Ronnie Halliburton can count them on one of his huge hands.

And although he’s not a coach, this former Tiger football player is intimately tied to LSU sports as director of LSU athletics facilities.

Of the 20 sports and venues at which LSU competes, none matters more to the masses than Tiger Stadium. For example, when LSU hired two new sports turf professionals last spring, “we talked to them about your resume being on national TV,” Halliburton recalls. “It’s the window to LSU. Before anybody hears anything about LSU, the first thing they see is either Les Miles or Tiger Stadium.”

Halliburton neither dresses nor grooms Head Coach Miles. But his home field is manicured from top to bottom, through hurricanes, tough football games and grass viruses. Surprisingly, it’s not how Tiger Stadium looks that keeps Halliburton up at night.

“What keeps me awake is worrying about how she performs,” he says lovingly of the field turf that has produced two national champions in the past six years. “Our conversations during football season—and not just Tiger Stadium, but every single playing surface that we have—is about how they want them to play. Our asset is speed, so he wants it low and tight so people can fly.”

Miles counts on it.

“They do a great job preparing the field,” Miles says. “They want what I want, which is for it to be fast and sure-footed.”

Halliburton, from Port Arthur, Texas, was recruited by Ed Zaunbrecher for LSU head coach Bill Arnsparger, and finished under Coach Mike Archer. A tight end at LSU, he pursued a pro career as a linebacker with the Denver Broncos and later Shreveport when the Canadian Football League tried to expand to the States.

Ronnie Halliburton is one of a tiny group of former LSU athletes who are now in managerial jobs at LSU other than coaching. They include:

Miriam Farr Segar, a former basketball player, now an assistant athletic director in the compliance office.

Verge Ausberry, Halliburton’s former LSU teammate, now senior associate athletic director.

Eric Reid, who was a member of the LSU track team, now an assistant director of parking, traffic and transportation.

He came back to LSU, earning his general studies degree in 1996 with minors in business, marketing and social work. Halliburton’s first LSU job was with Residential Life at the time the NCAA phased out athletic dorms. It was the beginning of a journey that allowed him to learn LSU’s ropes from the ground up. He moved to facilities services, where he oversaw every building on campus—responsible for special events, custodial operations and some maintenance.

At six feet four inches tall, he’s a towering former Tiger player, but he’s not some ex-jock expecting preferential treatment.

“It really developed my managerial skills for dealing with people,” Halliburton recalls of his early days as an LSU employee. “I had almost 200 people on staff, and it allowed me to see the university from a different perspective. Because in housing, you were kind of isolated.”

In 2003, he made the move to his current job, where he has 55 employees.

“But I had continued to work with the Athletics Department the whole time. I had never gotten detached from sports, and you stay in touch.”

Which is why he has such a deep and subtle understanding of Tiger Stadium.

“Even the slightest shift of the carpet and canopy of the grass can be the difference between Trindon Holliday cutting and having a tackler missing him, or him having to slow down and gather himself,” Halliburton says. “We don’t want that to be on his mind. We want him to get the ball and go.”

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