LSU vs. Florida State: Two Top-10 Spenders Highlight CFB Weekend
The marquee college football game of the first week of the season is without a doubt No. 8 Florida State against No. 5 LSU on Sunday in Orlando, Fla. According to Logitix, fans are paying an average of $445 per ticket on the secondary market—far and away the highest of any contest.
No wonder Powerade chose this game to kick off the TV portion of its first national college sports marketing campaign. Florida State defensive end Jared Verse and LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels both feature in the brand’s new advertisements.
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Not only did the two teams play a 24-23 thriller to open last season, but it is the only game this week featuring two teams ranked in the preseason top 25. It is also the only game featuring two of the top-10 football spenders in the country among public schools, according to Sportico’s Intercollegiate Finances Database. The Tigers spent $59.4 million on football in 2021-22, sixth most in the country, while the Seminoles’ bill came in at $54.6 million, good for 10th.
No other matchup on the college football schedule will feature two top-10 teams in the preseason rankings or two top-10 teams in football expenses until Week 4 on Sept. 23.
Florida State has been a consistent top-10 spender for a while, but LSU spent only the 27th-most of all public schools in 2017-18. That increased to 25th in 2018-19 and then 17th during the two COVID-impacted years, before shooting all the way to sixth after the pandemic.
The jump is due to an increase in coaching salaries. The LSU athletic department paid its football coaches $24.6 million during 2021-22—tops in the country and far ahead of Florida State’s total of $12.6 million, which ranked 19th.
LSU, which won the 2019 national title, has more than doubled its football coaching compensation since 2017-18, while the average FBS public school has risen just 30% over that same time span.
The Tigers also dished out a hefty $6.9 million in severance for scandal-ridden former head coach Ed Orgeron, with whom they parted ways in fall 2021 and to whom they owe an additional $10 million by 2025 as part of the buyout agreement. Combined, coaching compensation and severance payments make up more than half of the school’s football expenses pie.
Their new head coach, Brian Kelly, isn't cheap, either, after LSU pried him from Notre Dame in November 2021. His salary was $8.9 million in fiscal year 2022, according to the department’s financial documents. He, too, has a generous buyout clause, which would pay 90% of his base and supplemental compensation for all years remaining on his deal if he is fired without cause.
While LSU is a national outlier when it comes to coaches’ pay, Florida State is in its own unique financial situation. The athletic department is exploring how it could raise capital from institutional funds, such as private equity. The school is considering a structure where commercial rights are rolled into a new entity, a fund invests in that company, and then makes back its money down the road from a future increase in media/sponsorship revenue.
The process comes as Florida State administrators have publicly expressed a potential desire to leave the Atlantic Coast Conference, but that move would come with a $120 million exit fee. Hence the need for raising capital.
The Seminoles, as a member of the ACC, believe that they are financially falling behind rival schools in the SEC, such as LSU. Indeed, while the SEC has nine schools that spent more than $45 million on football in 2021-22, the ACC has only two.
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