At the conclusion of Stephanie Rempe’s volleyball career at Arizona, she was asked to participate in an exit interview with new UA athletic director Jim Livengood.
“What type of career do you want to pursue?” Livengood asked.
“Someday I’d like to have your job,” she said.
A year later, Rempe was working at Applebee’s.
Thus began the career of one of the most powerful female administrators in college sports. From serving mozzarella sticks to being the executive deputy director of athletics and chief operating officer at LSU.
A few days ago, Rempe was sitting on her porch in Baton Rouge, Louisiana — her new “office” — and working on scenarios for the reopening of LSU’s defending national champion football team.
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“We have already had 97% renewals for tickets, and we have a home game scheduled with Texas,” she said, which immediately put an economic perspective on how much COVID-19 has affected college sports. Do you realize LSU averaged 100,842 fans at Tiger Stadium last year?
If there is no LSU-Texas game in Baton Rouge, it could mean in excess of $20 million in unrealized revenue.
No, this isn’t Applebee’s any more.
Rempe’s climb to become COO at an athletic department that made $157 million in revenues in the fiscal year 2018-19 is one of the most remarkable stories in college sports. It began, innocently enough, when her late father, George H. Rempe III, a quarterback at Phoenix Brophy Prep, left Phoenix to enroll at Arizona in the late 1960s intent on becoming an attorney.
Mr. Rempe, a Vietnam veteran, was an Arizona fan like few others.
“Both of my parents graduated from the UA; so did my brothers and cousins,” says Rempe. “I grew up going to UA-ASU football games. My dad was a passionate hater of ASU. I grew up in that environment.”
So when Rempe enrolled at Arizona in the fall of 1989 after a multisport high school career in Santa Barbara, California, her dad, a graduate of the UA’s James E. Rogers College of Law and a longtime attorney in Santa Barbara, arranged for her to get a walk-on tryout on Mike Candrea’s softball team.
“I walked into Candrea’s office and he showed me our schedule — 56 games. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me!’ I had just joined a sorority and was away from home and wanted to have some fun.”
A year later, her sports genes kicking in again, Rempe became part of coach Dave Rubio’s first UA volleyball teams. She became a starter, helping the Wildcats reach the Sweet 16 in 1993, ending an 0-8 streak against the hated Sun Devils.
Stephanie Rempe walked on to the UA volleyball team in the early 1990s, then earned a starting job.
It was then that she met Livengood, uncertain what the future held.
Rempe spent a summer working for USA Volleyball in Colorado. She returned to Arizona and earned a master’s degree in sports administration. Just as she was ready to return to Colorado and pursue a job a pro sports, she was offered a job in Arizona’s C.A.T.S. Life Skills program, which led to jobs in the Click Hall of Champions/Hall of Fame and ultimately to the A Club, which put her on a career path in which she became a Miner, a Sooner, a Husky, an Aggie and a Tiger.
“But my kids can sing ‘Bear Down, Arizona,’ ” she said with a laugh.
In the summer of 1998, UTEP athletic director Bob Stull phoned the UA and offered Rempe a job as the Miners’ senior women’s athletic administrator.
“Arizona tried to keep her,” said Stull. “I talked to four people at Arizona and they all loved her.”
Rempe’s climb in college athletics was swift and sure. Oklahoma hired her to be its SWA in 2008. Washington wooed her away from OU five years later, making her the No. 2 person in athletic director Scott Woodward’s department. When Woodward left to become AD at Texas A&M in 2017, Rempe was part of the deal.
Her most significant duty was to oversee Texas A&M’s football program, then coached by Kevin Sumlin. It was while Rempe was on duty that Sumlin was fired and Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher hired for a contract worth $75 million.
No, this wasn’t UTEP any more.
When Rempe and her husband Greg Remien, a former UA athletic trainer, and their two young children, Riley and Ryan, left A&M for LSU it was one of the most newsworthy administrative transactions in college sports.
She could probably hand-pick most vacant AD jobs of her choice; she has interviewed for openings at mid-major schools but decided not to pursue them. It seems inevitable that she will be the athletic director at a Power 5 conference school.
“She’s such a wonderful person,” says Dennis Polian, the chief of staff of Arizona’s football program, who worked with Rempe at Texas A&M. “She was a great mentor to me, she recharged my career path and had a lot to do with why I’m here. I think she’ll be a great athletic director when the time comes. She is so patient and unselfish.”
Rempe has taken time to smell the roses. She has twice competed in the Boston Marathon, and has completed a triathlon.
She is home-schooling her children during the coronavirus pandemic and is in no hurry to leave LSU.
“I’m happy,” she said. “You could say I’m waiting for the perfect job, but they don’t open often and they’re hard to find. I’ve been so fortunate. I’m really enjoying the ride.”
