SHREVEPORT – Northwestern State two-time football All-American and former athletic administrator Dr. William Broussard was officially approved Friday by the Southern University System Board of Supervisors as the new director of athletics at Southern-Baton Rouge.
 
The board, meeting in Shreveport, accepted the unanimous recommendation of its athletic committee made two weeks earlier at the recommendation of Southern Chancellor Dr. James Llorens. The Associated Press reported Friday Broussard was given a two-year contract with an option for a third year.
 
Broussard, 33, was an All-America center in 1998 and 1999 for Coach Sam Goodwin's Demons. He was a National Football Foundation Scholar-Athlete who received nearly $25,000 in postgraduate scholarships, and he earned his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Arizona. He worked at NSU for more than four years until last spring.
 
He returned from Arizona in February 2007 to NSU as assistant athletics director, executive director of the NSU Athletic Association and was promoted to associate athletics director. He was the primary fundraiser for Northwestern athletics and oversaw marketing and corporate sponsorship, also handling football game management duties among other administrative responsibilities.
 
Broussard left Northwestern late last spring to become director of athletics at Centenary College in Shreveport as that university transitioned downward from NCAA Division I to Division III status.
 
At Southern, he takes the helm of one of the nation's premiere historically black university athletic programs, a tradition-rich department that  competes in the Southwestern Athletic Conference and is annually one of the attendance leaders in Division I FCS football.
 
Two Southern head coaches are like Broussard, prominent former NSU student-athletes. Men's basketball coach Roman Banks and women's basketball coach Sandy Pugh each already are members of the Graduate N Club Hall of Fame due to their competitive accomplishments at Northwestern. Pugh has been serving as interim athletics director for much of the past year. Banks just completed his first season as head coach.
 
Broussard is one of the more acclaimed student-athletes ever at NSU, and went on to become a successful fundraiser. During his tenure in charge of the NSU Athletic Association, rebranded in 2007 as the Demon Victory Fund, new benchmarks were set for annual unrestricted support of NSU Athletics. There were four consecutive total attainment records set as the largest scholarship endowment and largest planned gift in NSU Athletics history were received.
 
Records were also established for Select 100 members (197 who gave at least $1,000 annually), annual commitments to the Endowed Scholarship Program (9) and gift-in-kind donations.
 
He also served as an assistant professor of journalism and communications at NSU, was president of the Natchitoches Lions Club and was the Southland Conference representative on the National Association of Athletic Directors of Development.
 
A Crowley native, Broussard was a 2000 graduate, with distinction, of the Louisiana Scholars' College at Northwestern. He is married to the former Kendra Peters, a Lady Demon volleyball player during the couple's days as undergraduates at NSU.
 
Broussard played on the Demons' 1997 and 1998 Southland Conference championship football teams.