Michael Alford could see the future coming at him long before he signed on as Florida State’s Athletics Director. He could feel it and hear it as clearly as a freight train rumbling down a straight stretch of new track.
What were his hints?
The first warning signs were the rights agreements that were signed years ago to take effect in 2024 for both the Southeastern and Big Ten conferences, agreements that would pay their member institutions more than $40 million per member per year beyond what any school in any other conference would receive. Couple that revenue disparity with sticky Grant of Rights agreements that bound Pac-12 and Big 12 conference members from leaving for the more lucrative SEC and Big Ten until 2024, with ACC schools ostensibly bound until 2036.
The train a comin’ was also loaded with dynamite in the form of anti-trust lawsuits against the NCAA that would impact every school in every conference financially. The first car on the track was the Alston vs. NCAA case which, as expected, the United States Supreme Court upheld with a rare, unanimous verdict regarding athlete compensation in which the Highest Court in the Land ruled the NCAA business model was illegal. This would usher in the era of Name, Image and Likeness compensation to athletes and the freedom to transfer every season if they wished.
Linked to the Alston case was House vs. the NCAA, which sought revenue sharing with athletes. Knowing the NCAA would lose House, and lose big, the NCAA and its five largest conferences would eventually choose to settle for less ($1.8 billion dollars) plus a share of future revenue estimated to cost each member institution about $25 million a year. And there are more anti-trust freight cars yet to be heard a comin'.
None of these paradigm changes came as a surprise to Alford, who spent an hour with the Osceola candidly discussing a broad range of prescient issues facing collegiate athletics — including of course the program he now leads.
The four major topics we discussed were the House Settlement, Stadium Construction Projects, FSU Board of Regents vs. The Atlantic Coast Conference, and Title IX and the addition of women’s lacrosse, which are all interrelated in Alford’s master financial plan.
“We’ve anticipated this coming for several years,” Alford said of the House settlement. “We didn’t know what the settlement would be exactly. Financially we were guessing, through our best analytics, somewhere around $30 million conservatively. It ended up being $22 million and then the $2 million you have to pay the NCAA. We did not know what (the people negotiating the settlement) were going to do with scholarships. That’s why I was going with $30 million to be conservative on my projections. So it ended kind of where we thought it would. What we didn’t know was the roster limits and that’s still in discussion.”
House vs. NCAA settlement
Within the House settlement, the NCAA and the conferences agreed to increase the number of scholarships awarded in various sports. For instance, the football roster could increase from 85 to 105 and baseball from 11.7 to 34 in order to expand the number of opportunities, including scholarships and other compensation.
We will explore each of the four topics discussed in the Alford interview – House, Construction, FSU vs. ACC lawsuit, and Title IX and Women’s Lacrosse – in a four-part series in the Osceola during the upcoming football bye week.
While the schools do not have to fully fund all 105 football or 34 baseball scholarships, suffice it to say Alford’s projection of $30 million in additional expenses to Florida State isn’t far from reality.
The Boosters are already tasked with raising $22 million per year for the operating budget and another $10 million-plus for facilities, so one wonders how FSU Athletics/Boosters and its donors will be able to find as much as $30 million in additional funding each and every year.
“Seeing this coming was why we decided to move forward with the stadium projects, because of the revenue it is going to generate,” Alford said, noting the stadium is but one source of new revenue.
Stadium project
The stadium project is on schedule as FSU fans are set to arrive for the 2024 season opener on Monday against Boston College, with ultimate completion of the west sideline scheduled for the 2025 season opener against Alabama.
FSU has installed temporary seating for 7,400 on the west sideline, Alford said, noting there is “a great plan” for temporary concessions and portable restrooms.
“Everything is going as planned for (the West) side,” Alford said a week before the temp seats, restrooms and concessions were completed. Permanent work is also now complete on the East side for Monday’s 7:30 p.m. kickoff.
Alford said the East side project included widening aisles, adding handrails, fixing life-safety issues in the concourse, expanding the number of ADA seats and ramps.
“We will have seat caps (ventilated seat bottom) on the east side for ticket holders this year, so you’ll have a defined, comfortable (space), no back on it, but comfortable 18-inch cap on the seats,” Alford said.
The reason those seat caps won’t have backs on them is because when Doak was built in 1950 the distance between rows, what is called tread depth, was just 27 inches, which is not enough to allow people to move down a row comfortably if seat backs were added.
The new west side seating will have 33-inch tread depths, which will add more legroom and allow seat backs.
The east side has also eliminated the steep ramps going from the lower concourse into the seating section of the stadium, replacing them with steps. The long, circular ramps on the outer part of the stadium, which provide pedestrian circulation to the upper stands, remain unchanged.
Football Operations Building
The football operations building was delayed temporarily by the need to add a retaining wall along the Stadium Drive roadbed, which is now complete with the steel infrastructure of the building now emerging, starting at the soccer field end of the construction site, where the structure connects with the indoor football practice facility.
The two football projects require more than $400 million of bond financing. A considerable amount of the revenue generated from the stadium seat sales will go to funding the bond payments, but there will be some revenue available to help fund expanding operational needs. Once completed, the stadium will also generate additional revenue with concerts and other revenue-generating events.
Beyond the revenue generated from the stadium, what will FSU do to generate the revenue needed to fulfill the House settlement?
“I’m on the phone with other ADs constantly,” Alford said. “Nobody has found the perfect answer yet, I can tell you, unless they’re lying to me. Nobody. We’re all running through the same exercise right now.”
What Alford didn’t say, nor needed to say, is the athletic directors in the SEC and Big Ten don’t have the daunting financial challenge athletic directors in other conferences have, as they will begin to receive $40 million additional dollars per year from their media rights contracts starting in 2024.
ACC success initiative
One potential help will be the ACC’s new Success Initiative, which Alford has been a very vocal advocate for. The ACC Success Initiative will allow schools that invest in football or basketball to earn more than an equal share of conference revenues based on their football or basketball program’s annual success.
We asked Alford for an update on the ACC Success Initiative, which has yet to be announced to the public, and about the ongoing lawsuit to free itself from the conference.
When asked, Alford responded, “Yeah, that’s been finalized,” Alford said. “If you go to the College Football Playoff, you get to keep the revenue you earn so it cuts the gap. And if you keep winning in the CFP, it just grows. If you win the national championship, you can get up to about $20 million additional success initiatives.”
That’s good news and real money.
Osceola managing editor Bob Ferrante has asked the conference office for a copy of the initiative document in July and August but thus far to no avail. As soon as we can get our mitts on it, we’ll be able to provide you with a detailed look at how much any one school can receive. While the success initiatives will not bridge the gap, it can help.
“The success initiative is mostly driven by football, so we’re excited about it because it helps close the gap,” Alford said, “But it doesn’t cure the financial gap over the years compared to the power two conferences.”
While Alford said it is possible to earn as much as $20 million in an uber successful National Championship season, the payout will be significantly less in a season in which FSU were to make the playoff but fall short of a championship. And that math is why FSU and the ACC find themselves in courthouses in Florida and North Carolina.
More than a year prior to the Florida State Board of Trustees filing a lawsuit against the Atlantic Coast Conference in December 2022 seeking a declaratory judgement from the court on the legal merit of the Grant of Rights, FSU pursued a success initiative within the ACC, where a school willing to invest in football or basketball could earn more than other ACC schools who did not invest for success.
One wonders if this ACC Success Initiative would have come to fruition this year absent the lawsuits from Florida State and Clemson.
This is the first part of an exclusive series of stories with Alford the Osceola will run during the football bye week, which will continue on Tuesday. We’ll report Alford's candid thoughts about the complexity of the lawsuit, how FSU will approach new roster limits in various sports agreed to in the House Settlement, the timing on Florida State’s addition of women’s lacrosse and meeting Title IX requirements, as well as more information on success initiatives. We’ll conclude the series with a column from Jerry Kutz with his perspective on these prescient matters.
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