**The quotes in this story come from Southern Regional Medical Center President Charles Harvey’s interview with Matt Moscona on After Further Review. Watch the full interview here.
Charles Harvey painted a grim picture of the Governor’s Mansion from Monday night.
Elected officials, LSU administrators and some of the top boosters from the school assembled to hear LSU President Dr. Wade Rousse’s plan to drive revenue to the LSU athletic department. The prevailing sentiment was that LSU had agreed to a plan to involve private equity and was just relaying the news.
“I was definitely skeptical,” Harvey, the President of Southern Regional Medical Center, said. “When LSU comes calling, usually it’s for money. And so, I put on my big boy pants. I went to the Governor’s Mansion…It’s very quaint little group. Everybody’s sitting in the hallway. That was the talk. This is going to be a private equity. They’re going to tell us what they’ve already done. The mood was kind of somber. I don’t like private equity when it comes to LSU. I just don’t agree with it. Private equity eats everything up.”
As Harvey explained, that notion was immediately squelched by Governor Jeff Landry who addressed the room first. He set the stage for Rousse, who has a financial background and hatched this new plan, who then revealed the details.
The glum nature of the room flipped.
“They roll out this plan, and literally it’s not private equity,” Harvey said. “It’s not. That was probably one of the first statements Dr. Rousse made. This is not private equity. LSU will maintain control of this whole deal. And so, as they’re unveiling it and you’re hearing all of this and you’re watching it and they’re showing you how everything’s going to generate this revenue, it’s like a light bulb goes off in your head. Like, man, where where has this been?”
Harvey declined to go into too many specifics about the future but did reveal his experience in the recent past and present. He’s donated an estimated $1 million to LSU athletics over the last five years. What started as small asks grew over time. The largest check he’s written came for “half a million dollars.”
While Harvey is extremely passionate about Tiger athletics, this pace is more than he and many other top boosters can willingly maintain.
“It’s not just LSU. College athletics is in trouble,” Harvey said. “You can’t sustain what you’re doing right now. It’s impossible. NIL is not going to go backwards. It’s only going to keep growing.”
Tiger Athletic Foundation has helped fund LSU athletics to the tune of $177 million over the last six years. It’s now dipping into reserves and cannot be counted on to bail out the various programs year over year.
Rousse and college administrators around the country are aggressively pursuing alternative revenue streams like jersey patches, on field and court advertising and more.
Utah has partnered with Otro Capital to infuse its athletics department with cash. That, of course, often brings in other interests. Harvey feared that was where LSU was headed but left Monday’s meeting without that concern.
Acrisure founder and Co-chairman and CEO Greg Williams was in attendance at the meeting. He and his wife, Dawn, recently gifted $401 million to Michigan State, his alma mater. His presence in a room full of Louisianians could have sounded other alarms about the presence of private equity in the room.
Harvey refuted that once again.
“Most private equity controls (financial decisions),” Harvey explained. “If I’m going to give you $100 million, I want to control it. I want to control what’s going on. I want to control how I make my money back, how quickly I make my money back. This isn’t like that. It’s just not like that. What they rolled out is not like that. It’s controlled by LSU.”
Williams would have a seat at the table, but his vote wouldn’t carry additional weight.
“There’s going to be a board of I don’t know how many people. They might have said it last night. And he’s going to have one seat,” Harvey said. “LSU is going to control majority of the seats. And so, it’s not private equity. He can’t overthrow it or control the votes in it… I mean, is it coming from a fund? Sure, it might be. I don’t know. I don’t know Greg Williams. I met him last night for the first time…He’s sitting in a room full of Tiger fans and had no qualms about saying, ‘look I did a deal similar to this, not as complex, not as forward thinking as this plan is.'”
Harvey suggested this plan has been in the works for months. Rousse and LSU are still handling due diligence. The Attorney General and IRS have to approve of the structure which could happen in the coming weeks. At that point, the public could be made aware of the inner workings.
According to Harvey, he and many of the school’s top donors left the meeting feeling optimistic that LSU could be on the forefront of something transformational.
“Unless they have just pulled the wool over a lot of people’s eyes, myself included, I think this is going to be a great thing for everybody,” Harvey said. “I told the governor this. I said it to other people last night. LSU is going to be at the forefront of this model. You’re going to see a lot of people adopt this model after LSU and try and mimic it exactly like LSU. For the first time in a long time, the state’s going to be number one in something.”
LSU’s athletic programs have been chasing that top ranking for years, and many in the Mansion on Monday have been asked repeatedly for significant donations to keep up. Between buying out coaches, hiring new ones and turning over multimillion dollar rosters every year, the checks have piled up.
The ask will still be there, but Rousse’s plan could help drive sustainable revenue internally that would lessen the frequency and the size of the asks moving forward.
“The mood was somber when you first started because everybody’s worried about private equity,” Harvey said. “Oh, private equity is going to take over LSU. Oh, here we go. Here we go. And then all of a sudden, you look at it, and it’s not private equity. And I know for me, can’t speak for everybody in the room, but it was like a weight was lifted off your shoulders. Like here it is. Here it is.”
