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There’s a lot going on in Florida State athletics these days—including a legal battle with the Atlantic Coast Conference over exit fees, a $327 million bond offering and talks with private equity—but you likely won’t know it based on the financial reporting of the Florida State University Athletic Association.
As of June 30, 2023, the organization that operates the athletic department held total assets of $12,645 and liabilities of $2.3 million, according to the organization’s most recent audited financial statements. Its FY23 tax return showed only $1.34 million in gross receipts during that period, and expenses of $343,339. All but $6,120 of those expenses went to pay for “termination benefits” for Florida State athletic department staff.
Needless to say, these figures pale in comparison to the $170 million in revenue and $172 million in expenses Florida State’s athletic department reported to the NCAA for that same time period. This discrepancy—and its general lack of financial activity—has made FSUAA an oddity among university athletic associations in its state and around the country. It also calls into question what exactly the FSUAA is and what purpose it now serves, more than a decade after it was created and five years since the school’s board of trustees ostensibly empowered it to oversee and manage the entire athletics program.
For now, FSUAA exists as a “reliable administrative entity,” says Florida State athletic director Michael Alford, who was hired in 2021.
“Our long-term plan for the FSUAA remains true to its original intent—to serve as an entity to create improved collaboration and cooperation between FSU Athletics, the University and [its booster club],” Alford said in a statement. He declined to comment on whether the organization’s role could evolve in the future.
Amid the current convulsions in college sports, brought on by the inception of NIL and the nearing expectations of athlete revenue-sharing, the Seminoles have become a poster child of sorts for the gray middle area, a major national program left out of the monied comfort of the two richest conferences—the SEC and Big Ten. That has motivated its recent push for resources.
The school’s lawsuit against the ACC could save it roughly $500 million as it tries to extricate itself from the league and possibly join the SEC or Big Ten. The $327 million municipal bond offering is earmarked for making FSU’s football stadium a bigger revenue generator. Institutional capital could provide yet another pool of usable cash in FSU’s quest to keep pace with the sport’s biggest athletic departments.
As it charts its course, it is conceivable that it will be forced to redraw parts of the diagram of its athletic business consortium, which includes the school, the FSUAA and Seminoles Boosters Inc. The latter two are now both classified as university direct support organizations (DSOs), a special designation in Florida state law that, among other things, shields it from open records requests. By spinning off its athletic department as a separate DSO, FSU appeared to be following in the footsteps of in-state rivals Florida and Central Florida, both of which did this years before, and other schools such as Georgia, Clemson and Louisville.
But in contrast to Florida State, the other university athletics associations functionally operate their athletic departments—employing coaches and athletic administrators, for example—as borne out in their financial disclosures. For example, the University Athletic Association, the Florida Gators’ DSO, reported receiving $190 million and spending $174 million of expenses in the fiscal year 2022, numbers that perfectly match what the school reported on its athletic financial disclosures to the NCAA.
Meanwhile, the FSU Athletic Association reported $2.94 million in revenue and $2.88 million in expenses during that same time. The organization, according to the school’s press release, was supposed to be responsible for “evaluating and compensating the director of athletics,” but Alford, who carries the title of the FSUAA’s CEO, received all of his nearly $1 million in FY23 compensation from “related organizations.” The same was true for his predecessors.
After being formed in 2012, the Florida State University Athletic Association lay mostly dormant until 2019, when its role was expanded as part of an agreement between the university and Seminole Boosters Inc., FSU’s powerful athletic fundraising arm. For years, tension had increased between the school’s main campus, its athletic department and Seminole Boosters, which did not have to report to the school’s administration. Those tensions bubbled up over the course of former head football coach Jimbo Fisher’s tenure, as documented in a 2020 ESPN investigation that showed how Seminole Boosters held sway over key athletic department decisions, such as coaching hires.
Seminole Boosters reported $88 million in total revenue and $73 million in expenses for FY23. According to its tax return, the organization disbursed $23.5 million to the athletic department to supplement staff salaries, pay for athlete scholarships and “support various other sport needs.” In addition, Seminole Boosters spent $2 million for FSU athletic facility maintenance expenses.
Though FSUAA had already existed for seven years, Florida State announced in 2019 that the organization had been newly created as the DSO to administer FSU athletics on behalf of the university and “to provide greater alignment, transparency, coordination” between the university and Seminole Boosters.
Some media reports at the time speculated that this new structuring was done to shield the Seminoles athletic department from the state’s public records laws, via the DSO exemption.
Over the last year, Florida State has become a main point of focus in the current revamping of college sports. The school, as Sportico previously reported, has been at the forefront in pursuing institutional capital through a secret effort code-named “Project Osceola.” Since last year, FSU has been working with JPMorgan Chase and had discussions with two private equity firms, Sixth Street and Arctos Partners. Last month, the university issued two revenue bonds, totaling $326.6 million, to renovate Doak Campbell Stadium and finance the construction of a new football facility.