Skip Bertman Has Died at 88 — Five National Titles at LSU, and Then He Ran the Athletic Department That Hired Him

LSU announced on Friday morning that Skip Bertman has died at the age of 88. He coached the university’s baseball team from 1984, won five national championships, and afterwards ran the athletic department he had spent two decades working inside.

No cause of death has been given, and the university’s announcement did not specify one.

The record, in full

Took over LSU	1984
National championships	5 — 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000
College World Series appearances	11
Wins	870
Winning percentage	.724
National coach of the year	7 times
Hall of Fame	Inaugural College Baseball Hall of Fame class, 2006
Players to the major leagues	41

What .724 across that many games actually means

A winning percentage is easy to skim past. Held over 870 wins, it stops being a rate and becomes a description of an era: roughly seven wins in every ten, sustained for long enough that two generations of players passed through it.

The five championships get the headline, and they should. But the eleven College World Series appearances are the more revealing number, because reaching Omaha eleven times means the programme was not built around one exceptional group. It was built around something that kept working after each group left.

The part of the career that is genuinely unusual

Plenty of coaches win championships. Very few then take over the athletic department.

The two jobs ask for almost opposite things. Coaching is a single programme, a single roster, a season measured in games. Running an athletic department is budgets, facilities, compliance, hiring and firing other coaches, and a season measured in fiscal years. Bertman did both at the same institution, which meant eventually sitting on the other side of conversations he had spent twenty years on one side of.

That is the detail worth holding on to, because it explains why the tributes coming out of Baton Rouge are not only from baseball.

41 players to the majors

The number that tends to survive longest in a coach’s record is not the trophies. It is how many of his players went on. Forty-one reaching the major leagues from a single college programme is a long-running pipeline, and every one of those careers began with somebody deciding that a teenager was worth developing.

What is known and what is not

• Known: LSU announced his death on the morning of Friday 14 August 2026, aged 88.
• Not stated: a cause of death. The announcement did not include one.
• Not yet announced at the time of writing: funeral or memorial arrangements.

This page will be updated if the family or the university releases further details.

The date and circumstances of the announcement, the age of 88, the 1984 start at LSU, the five national championships in 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997 and 2000, the eleven College World Series appearances, the 870 wins and .724 winning percentage, the seven national coach of the year honours, membership of the inaugural 2006 College Baseball Hall of Fame class, the 41 former players who reached the major leagues, and his subsequent role as LSU athletic director were taken from LSU’s official announcement and from ESPN, NOLA.com and WAFB reporting on 14 August 2026. No cause of death has been made public.

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