LSU Athletics
(The quotes from LSU Athletic Director Verge Ausberry come from his interview on Wednesday with Matt Moscona on After Further Review. Watch the interview here.)
By Hunt Palmer
Money movement controls college sports. LSU is certainly no exception.
With a stable of elite coaches now in place for what feels like at least the near future, the question for Director of Athletics Verge Ausberry is how to make the money work.
Football, under newly hired Lane Kiffin, is non-negotiable. It must receive a full commitment in order to fund the entire department. Behind football comes national title coaches in Jay Johnson and Kim Mulkey as well as the return of Will Wade to men’s basketball, which has jolted that program back to life.
With a finite amount of funding available, managing the money becomes the goal– that, and keeping the coaches happy. Money used to be for coaching salaries, facility enhancements and travel budgets. Now it’s for players, and without top dollar, championship level players become hard to come by.
“I want my coaches not to say, ‘ok we couldn’t get a player because we couldn’t afford this,’” Ausberry said to Matt Moscona on After Further Review on Wednesday. “We don’t want that. We want to make sure we have the best players, the best talent, the best coaches, the best staffs. It’s going to cost us a lot. That’s what we’re fighting with our overall budget.
“We can’t just keep going to (Tiger Athletic Foundation) to bail us out. They have done a great job for many years, 10 years, the tune of the amount of money they have paid to bail us out. They’re going to their donors. They’re knocking on every door every day saying, let’s help the athletic department. But we have to be smart about what we do moving forward.”
In the first year of revenue sharing, LSU followed many departments nationwide with the 75-15-5-5 method. That meant football got a 75 percent cut. Men’s basketball got 15 percent. Women’s basketball got five percent, and the rest of the sports were allotted portions of the remaining five.
In Baton Rouge, baseball isn’t generally lumped in with “the others” at any point. It was in 2025-26. That is changing.
“Moving forward, we’re going to make sure that baseball, their rev share is going up,” Ausberry said. “We’re also going to have more money for them for NIL. I’ve been meeting with Jay about that. He had some concerns about where we were and some things we had to do, and we met this week on that.”
Johnson confirmed the meeting to LouisianaSports.net and expressed his confidence in LSU’s AD moving forward.
“I am very fortunate to be working with Verge,” Johnson said. “He was instrumental in hiring me at LSU, and he played a large part in our two national championships. He knows the importance of baseball at LSU. We had a great meeting this week, and I have full confidence in his leadership and commitment to help me make LSU baseball the best it can be.”
That additional baseball revenue distribution is not expected to come at the expense of football or either basketball program. Ausberry said the department plans to fund those big four along with softball and gymnastics in the next school year. International or Olympic sports like track and swimming, among others, could be allotted more scholarship money to add additional players.
Ausberry sees it this way–football must drive the bus, but additional revenue can be generated by other sports.
“We have to be great in men’s basketball,” Ausberry said. “I just think that’s a sport that’s a revenue generator for us. You talk the TV contracts and tickets sales, that’s about a $9-$10 million dollar generator for us right now. So, I think we can up that and be better there…A lot of research we’ve done trying to figure out where we can grow financially, and men’s basketball was that area. We’re underachieving there.”
Many point to the deficit incurred by running championship level programs in women’s basketball and baseball and struggle to swallow the losses of the almighty dollar.
Not Ausberry. Not with either one. Women’s basketball reportedly operated at an $8 million deficit in 2024-25. Baseball, in a national championship year, lost just less than $1 million.
“Women’s basketball, they don’t have the big TV contract,” Ausberry said. “The TV contracts are the things that carry most of these sports, and they don’t have that. What they have is, they have an unbelievable brand, and that brand is Kim Mulkey. And that brand draws a lot of attention to LSU. Some people love her. Some people don’t. But that brand she has, she’s very important to us. Look at the young women that apply to come to LSU. They talk about women’s basketball. You talk about 68,000 applicants to the institution. That’s a big part of Kim’s national brand…Out of state tuition can help make the institution revenue also.”
Some point to women’s basketball and suggest some of those funds should be diverted to the men’s program or baseball. Ausberry staunchly believes in supporting the women’s basketball program fully while acknowledging that baseball will see some changes in the near future.
“Baseball, another place where we can grow some revenue,” Ausberry said. “Right now, Jay’s the highest paid coach in the country, and that changed our forecast there, but eventually that’s another program where we can grow at…Though Jay and them are in the red by a little bit, it’s still a positive because a lot of programs have big deficits in baseball. We’ve done well to have three sports, two make a profit and one very close to making a profit.”
Johnson’s comments to Tiger Rag about LSU’s commitment to baseball as well as his quotes last week about not being interested in Major League Baseball “for now” sparked conversation in Louisiana about his potential dissatisfaction with baseball’s spot on LSU’s financial totem pole.
“Jay and I have a very good relationship,” Ausberry said. “He was one of the people that I was in the interview room with when we interviewed baseball coaches, and that was the best interview I ever sat in. All the football coaches we’ve been involved in, college basketball, any coach you name, Jay Johnson is one of the best. He has what it takes to win here. And we’re going to make sure at LSU that Jay Johnson is always the No. 1 baseball coach in the country. That’s not a problem.”
As far as the revenue share between women’s basketball and baseball…
“Coming into next year, women’s basketball and baseball are probably going to be about the same number, about five percent,” Ausberry said. “I’ve only been on the job for four months. It wasn’t done that way before, but we’re going to do that. At the same time, we really helped baseball what we call “front loading” some money. We did that for them, and we raised a lot of money for baseball. So, we caught them up. My job is for coaches to let me know what he or she needs to be successful and the price. As I said, there’s not going to be a player out there that a coach comes to me and says we couldn’t get them because we couldn’t afford him or her.”
Ausberry was adamant the same commitment was directed at the two-time championship baseball coach.
“We’re going to do everything in our power here, myself, President Rousse and the rest of our team, to make sure Jay Johnson gets what it takes to win in college baseball.”
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