By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
New LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry sat down with Tiger Rag vice president/executive editor Todd Horne and editor Glenn Guilbeau recently in his office for a lengthy interview on a variety of subjects, including an estimated $25-to-$35 million athletic department deficit for 2026.
He also discussed LSU men’s basketball coach Matt McMahon’s status and talked about his first interview with then-Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin about becoming LSU’s new coach.
TIGER RAG: What are some of your strategies for 2026 as far as subsidizing some of the costs in this ever-changing college athletics landscape, particularly concerning Name, Image & Likeness and the fact that you are facing large deficits?
VERGE AUSBERRY: That’s a good question. And really there’s no definitive answer to that at this point. Being an athletic director is different than it was five years ago, three years ago. Everybody in the country right now, with the uncertainty we have, we’re all trying to figure that out. What’s it going to look like? There are no real regulations right now. We’re dealing with court systems, congress, collective bargaining. You hear about Super Leagues. We at LSU, we’re going to take a leadership position.
TIGER RAG: How does LSU take a leadership position?
AUSBERRY: Not only making cuts and trying to find new revenue, but we have to be proactive. You’re right, there are going to be some deficits. And where the deficits come from – the buyout of the football coach ($54 million to former coach Brian Kelly, who was fired without cause last Oct. 26 with six years left on a 10-year contract worth approximately $100 million). That’s a deficit. We want to be in the black here. But when you do a $54 million buyout, then you hire new staff and you make some other changes, people don’t realize the money that costs.
Really, TAF (Tiger Athletic Foundation, which is LSU athletics’ fund raising arm), has been bailing us out for a long time – for the last 10 years, close to $100 million. They’ve been bailing us out year after year. And we have to start protecting TAF, too. They can’t keep just bailing us out, bailing us out. What’s that model going to look like? Those are things we’re going to have to look at as a department. Yeah, there’ll be cuts. And prioritizing some things, prioritizing some sports. Yes, we will.
TIGER RAG: Do you know which sports you will prioritize over others after – obviously – football?
AUSBERRY: Don’t know yet. That’s going to be over a period of time about who’s winning and doing well and who’s not doing well. All these big buyouts have to stop. Sometimes, you might say, “You know what, I’ve got to keep this coach an extra year.” We can’t be so active with firing coaches and changing coaches. That’s why you see a shorter-term contract with the new football coach ($91 million over seven years for Kiffin). Money’s about the same, but it’s a shorter term. We’re not hooked with a burden for so many years. And we’re not the only ones with budget issues. A lot of other major programs have deficits, and several much larger than us. Everybody’s facing the same thing.
One thing about having Dr. (Wade) Rousse here as the new LSU president and the alignment we have – he’s a financial guy. He’s a guy who worked on Wall Street. He’s a guy who worked on financial markets. There’s a lot of different questions out there. Do we subsidize this by loan? People talk about PE (private equity) firms. And you really don’t want to go that way, but you’ve got to put everything on the table.
TIGER RAG: Why not private equity firms?
AUSBERRY: Well, if you do a PE firm, that’s a different ballgame. They come in with a certain percentage, long term, and how does that look? When you sit down and talk about these things, how much is this going to cost us? With PE firms, you lose some control.
TIGER RAG: Is the arms race that started in the early 2000s, when everyone was building new facilities all the time, over?
AUSBERRY: Schools building facilities now, I think that’s a thing of the past almost. We’re dealing with a private company to do the new basketball arena. For us, the state’s not going to give you that. They can’t afford it. We can’t afford it. So, to say LSU is going to build a new arena one day on its own, or build a new building, those days are gone.
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And now with recruiting young people, especially that football facility we have, the training room, the sports medicine area, the weight room, those things are beautiful. Lane talked about it, said it looked like an Olympic Village.
But at the same time, that agent and that recruit today, they’re talking about how much money are they going to get. Now, LSU is different. People want to come to LSU. It’s the big one. They like to be here, partly because of the facilities. But that whole model has changed. Until we get to the point where we figure this out, and the importance of it, we’re going to always have these battles. We’re all talking about this – the athletic directors in the conference, we’re all talking about how we’re going to make this work. And we’re in better financial positions than a lot of people. If we didn’t have that buyout ($54 million to Kelly), we’d be in great shape. But right now, with the buyout, yeah that’s going to strain us a little bit.
TIGER RAG: So, it’s not true that one major donor paid for Brian Kelly’s $54 million buyout?
AUSBERRY: No, that’s not true at all. Not true at all. That’s our buyout. That’s about a million dollars a month.
TIGER RAG: Is men’s basketball coach Matt McMahon safer now than he would have been several years ago before NIL and because of the financial burdens LSU has, such as Brian Kelly’s $54 million buyout and Lane Kiffin’s $91 million contract over seven years, plus an approximate $40 million for the 2026 football roster?
AUSBERRY: That’s the thing. We’ve got to evaluate that and assess that. But the bottom line, if you fire a coach, remember that’s a $10 million buyout. To bring another coach in, that’s about another $15 million, not including the NIL packages you’ve got to get ready for them. That’s about a $40 million swing.
EDITOR’S NOTE: McMahon’s buyout would be approximately $7 million as he will have three years left on his contract through 2029 after this season. The buyout of his staff would be approximately $3 million.
TIGER RAG: That sport’s going to be profitable whether you keep him or you don’t, right?
AUSBERRY: That’s right. I’m not saying that’s the reason you keep him, but bottom line, the profit is $2 million from the TV contract. That’s profitable. But at the same time, we just have to be careful. People talking about firing coaches, getting rid of this coach here, getting rid of that coach, and I’m like, “Well, no. We’ve got to hold on that.” But the bottom line we have to understand, and I think every coach understands this, that building sitting over there across the street, that football stadium, if it is not winning, then we’ve got more problems. Nothing’s winning. And that’s the key. So, when you prioritize these things, you’ve got to sit there and say, “Hey, look, what are we going to be great at? What do we have to be great at?” And that’s the football team. Kim Mulkey (2023 national champion LSU women’s basketball coach) can take care of herself, Jay Johnson (2023 and ’25 national champion LSU baseball coach) can take care of himself, Jay Clark (2024 national champion LSU gymnastics coach) can take care of himself. Our tennis teams are winning. Our golf teams are winning. Our soccer teams are winning.
TIGER RAG: When Skip Bertman took over as AD in 2001, he said every sport at LSU can win big. Is that still true?
AUSBERRY: And Mark Emmert (LSU chancellor at the time) said we had to win everything. That can’t happen. We can’t afford to do it. Not in the current model we are sitting in today. Nobody can be successful like that, and, as you know, some pro teams, they don’t try to win every year. Because winning is expensive. So, that’s why we have to sit here as a staff and say, “What are we going to be successful at? And how are we going to be successful? And what is it going to cost us?” That’s very important. We have to realize there is donor fatigue. There is NIL-donor fatigue, ticket prices fatigue from our customers. We can’t just keep going up, going up and asking donors for this and that. We’re straining the whole system. This system we’re sitting in today is not sustainable. Not at all.
TIGER RAG: How long do you have to figure it out?
AUSBERRY: Like soon, very soon. We can’t wait. I tell people, you have anti-trust suits, but you also have collective bargaining. But who are you bargaining with? The senate collective bargaining takes five years. You look at the NFL model. The NFL is really one vertical. Because Monday through Saturday, they’re one. Sundays they play each other. But they’re still one. That’s how they do it. We have to figure out as administrators, as leaders in the athletic world, what is this going to look like? We can’t keep affording to pay coaches, pay players. It’s not sustainable. We can’t do this. The money must come from somewhere. There’s not enough money out there.
TIGER RAG: Having Playfly Sports as LSU’s official multimedia rights holder and selling your sponsorships – that’s the most sustainable path, right?
AUSBERRY: That’s the way we have to go. You have your revenue sharing. Then you have the people who go through Playfly ho give money to that to make sure that the players do things to get their money. You can’t just give them the money. That’s what we have set up for that. We got ahead of that and started doing that. Now, the CSC (College Sports Commission) wants to check those things out. Check with the advertisers, how much are they getting and what are they doing? That has to be approved. So, we’re doing it legally that way. The $20.5 million revenue share is for your whole department – 75 percent for football, 15 percent for basketball, five percent for women’s basketball, five percent for other sports. That’s how we have our revenue share.
TIGER RAG: How do you appropriately try to fund football and stay financially responsible as a department?
AUSBERRY: There are some models out there now where you do a loan process, and you pay so much back, how much you use. You deal with private equity. There will be some long term inventory. Once you get certain benchmarks, how long does that go? Short term or long term? Everything’s on the table. We’re just trying to figure out what’s best for us. And how much do you really have to borrow? We’re not a place that’s going to borrow like some places – $200 million, $300 million. We’re not like that. Really, it’s under $100 million, if we go into that type of system. But we’ve taxed pretty much everybody we can tax. We can do some little things – raise ticket prices here and do some things there. But the big picture, it’s still not going to fill that hole – a $54 million buyout.
We run a pretty slim department here, too. We’re not fat. We’re not a heavy department. We’ve made some layoffs here about five years ago. I think we’re pretty thin. We hire what we need. But we’re not top heavy up here. But we’re all still looking at it. I would like to have all my executive teams come up with a five percent cut. Just a natural cut. And cuts that can’t be unwound, so you make the cut, it’s a cut. Then after we look at that, we might look at it again – another five percent cut. Make the cut, see where it is. Just small increments. People say 10 percent, 20 percent you don’t have that many things to do around here. And most of your money is tied up in personnel. It’s the coaches, the players. That’s where all our money is really tied up at. We don’t have a big administrative staff. We never really did have a big administrative staff here.
TIGER RAG: Why wouldn’t you dramatically increase Matt McMahon’s portal budget? Basketball only needs a few elite players.
AUSBERRY: I don’t think the basketball coach can complain too much about his NIL money this year. Even right now. He’s still toward the bottom, but it’s still good enough, we felt. I think there are some teams that are spending a lot of money, more money, but, look, the coach lets us know what he needs and where he needs to be. I’m not going to tell a coach how his team needs to look. That’s his job to do. And I think he felt he was comfortable where he was. If he needed something else, we would’ve helped him with it. And we will help him with it.
“If he doesn’t make it (to the NCAA Tournament), we’ll have to reevaluate.”
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) January 14, 2026
-LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry on shaky future of basketball coach Matt McMahon:https://t.co/OPLFtwWEjn
He lost two of his best players. I think really he’d be in a different position, if he had them for the first two games. Before you make that decision, you’ve got to weigh all that into it. And we are. We’re not out there saying that. I made some comments about it. I said, “LSU should be in the NCAA Tournament.” But at the end of the day, we have to be fiscally responsible to everybody. And I think that fiscal responsibility is going to be important to our Board, the president, to our TAF board members and to us in this building.
The decisions we make from now on, we have to think about it fiscally. It’s not the wild, wild west like we used to be with the old athletic directors just pulling the trigger and making changes. Today it’s, “No, no no,” before you make that change. Is it fiscally responsible?
TIGER RAG: You likely will not be spending nearly as much money on the football roster next year as was spent this year (estimates at $40 million), right?
AUSBERRY: It’s going to be tight. When a new coach comes in, you’re doing a whole turn. Now, Lane’s here. That’s his team, his guys. Now it’s not as hard to keep guys here. Before he had to go get players. He lost 40 players. He brought in about 50 players. He’s rebuilding the whole team. You don’t have to do that again next year. He will keep most of his guys he recruited as freshmen and sophomores, so it’s much easier than going out and doing a whole new team over.
TIGER RAG: Will Kiffin likely will recruit more from high schools as time goes on?
AUSBERRY: I think so. Georgia doesn’t do that (recruit heavily from the portal). Ohio State doesn’t. You have to do it instantly to get players in here, like Lane did this year. You didn’t have an offensive line. You didn’t have a quarterback. So, you had to go out there fast and furious.
TIGER RAG: Estimates have LSU’s football roster at $40 million for 2026. Is that sustainable annually?
AUSBERRY: It’s not sustainable to do this. There is a lot of fatigue with our donors and our people who are giving. We have to be careful with this. That’s why it’s good to retain the guys that you have (next year) and build off what you have and use the high school guys at the right positions. And one year you may have to go out and get a quarterback. But bottom line is you’re not going to be spending all your money on a whole new team year after year. If you’re doing that, then you have some other problems in your program.
TIGER RAG: How do you justify losing approximately $8 million a year with women’s basketball?
AUSBERRY: You justify that because of what coach Kim Mulkey ($3.35 million a year salary) brings to LSU. The deficit for every major women’s basketball program in the country is about the same as that. South Carolina, all of them. South Carolina might be higher than ours. When you look at it, it’s one of the top sports. Title IX consequences on that, too. What Kim Mulkey brings to the table for us, we can’t buy. It’s priceless. Baseball doesn’t make a lot of money either. Jay is the highest paid college baseball coach in the country ($3.05 million a year), which is deserving. He’s not much in the black, or he’s right under, which is still a win. Because some baseball programs probably lose $5 or $6 million. What he does for LSU and its brand is very important. LSU baseball loses money because of his salary, because it’s so high. But it makes itself up, and we get close to it. So, that’s a win, because other baseball programs lose a few million a year. You’ve got to look at it as how close you are to that bottom line. So, if we didn’t have Kim Mulkey, we’d probably lose $11 million in women’s basketball.
TIGER RAG: What do you mean by that?
AUSBERRY: That’s season ticket sales. Kim fills the building. So bottom line, if she’s not there and you’re doing the same thing she’s doing exactly, that deficit number goes up. Same thing if we didn’t have Jay Johnson winning championships in baseball, that deficit number would go up. At least, Kim Mulkey fills that building. At least, all those corporate dollars are working, which we’re trying to calculate now in a study. How many times do you see our brand out there? Wherever Kim Mulkey goes or wherever LSU goes, that brand is so strong. So I’m talking to corporations, and that’s what they’re telling me. ‘We want to be part of LSU right now. Your brand is the strongest.” Even people who have given other schools around the country a lot of money, those corporations are saying, “Hey, we want a piece of LSU.” We’re one of the top three brands in the country. Kim Mulkey is part of that. Jay Johnson is part of that. Lane Kiffin is part of that. Our brand is so strong. That’s where the winning is taking place. Those are the people that people are attracted to.
TIGER RAG: And if you reach the College Football Playoff next year or go deep into it, you might not be that much in the red that year? You make that up.
AUSBERRY: That’s true. A lot of things could happen. Our football season ticket sales are off the chart right now. We had 32,000 requests (up to 44,000 now). We are way over. Our corporate sponsors are at about 25 percent over. Our fund raising is way over. We haven’t calculated all this yet, but we have to still act like we’re going to be in a deficit. That’s how we’ll treat it. It is time fiscally to start looking at this anyway. We can’t get out of control, as far as who you hire, how many people you hire. Why are you hiring new people and what are you hiring them for? You don’t always have to hire somebody. I would rather give somebody on staff more compensation and promote from within and sometimes go with one less person. When you hire a new person, then you have another whole benefits package. That doesn’t happen when you promote from within. Instead, spread the salary around and do some extra work. That’s how we have to start looking at things.
TIGER RAG: Would you consider fewer staff members in football?
AUSBERRY: Lane did already cut staff. He doesn’t have as much staff as Brian Kelly had. They made some cuts, especially in the personnel area. He said let’s make sure everybody knows their duties. What are they doing? I don’t care what sport it is. Just don’t hire to hire.
TIGER RAG: And LSU made sure Kiffin was able to keep Blake Baker as defensive coordinator with a new contract at $9.3 million over three years, making him one of the the highest paid assistants in college football?
AUSBERRY: I’m going to say this. Football will always be taken care of. We’re going to keep one of the best defensive coordinators in the country. We’re going to do what it takes. Can’t be $5 million a year, but we thought $3 million was doable. There are others getting $3 million or more out there. We also dropped some numbers on other coaches. Our coordinators are paid high. They should be. After that, a lot of these guys are at the $800,000 level. We had three or four at the $1 million level before. When you prioritize things, football has to be successful – within reason. We’re not going to blow the budget up and go crazy. But if that’s what it takes to keep these guys at these positions, and you have one of the best staffs in the country, that’s what we’re going to do.
We think if you win in football, you’re right, you make it up. We get to the playoffs, you start making that up. That’s the gamble we have here. That’s what we’re doing. We’re putting all our eggs in football. We have to.
TIGER RAG: How do you balance that with the other sports?
AUSBERRY: I want all the coaches in my office every day or calling me, saying, “Hey, look, I think if we do this, we can get better.” They’re the CEOs of their sport. They just let me know. I manage them and try to help them be successful. But we are being more fiscally responsible. And sometimes, we’ve got to say, “Hey, you know what, we just don’t have it. I’m sorry, but you know the charter plane is not available. I’m sorry, this hotel is not available.” That’s my job to help them manage that, and say, “We can cut here. Maybe an overseas trip is not good right now. You play a tournament in the states this year, and next year we can do that.” Help us help you. And we tell the coaches, “Things are going to change.”
TIGER RAG: Because of the budget issues facing all schools with NIL, for example, some programs out there, including in the SEC, are saying, “We can’t win a national championship in football, so we’re going to put everything in baseball, or maybe men’s basketball.” And there are SEC baseball programs now that have significantly larger budgets than LSU. With such a large football budget and knowing you can win a national championship in that, how do you combat other programs spending significantly more on baseball, for example, so you don’t fall behind in that sport?
AUSBERRY: I’ve heard that. We’re dealing with it. As one of the top football programs in the SEC and in the country and 75 percent of the revenue share going to football, I think if teams don’t want to invest in their football, they’re making a mistake. Because football pays for everything in the SEC, even from those schools that don’t compete for national championships in football. So, bottom line, if you’re not putting it into football, and I’m going to go ahead and say this. You know what, then maybe the top schools need to get a portion of the distribution from the schools not going as heavy into football. I might get slapped on the hand on this here, but if you’re not invested in a sport that’s generating the money for the SEC? And if you don’t want to invest in football as much as the others, then you know what? Then LSU, Texas, Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee that are investing, they should get a percentage (from the school not giving as much to football), because the money’s not coming from all those other sports.
Football drives the show. It’s not even close. So, if they don’t want to invest, then they’re not driving the big revenue pot that we’re all getting and share. If they don’t want to do that, that’s fine. But start giving us more. The SEC is built on football. Those TV contracts – all that big money – is from football.
It’s over. Lane Kiffin is LSU’s next football coach. Press conference introducing him set for Monday at LSU.https://t.co/kTRsVE78Of
— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) November 30, 2025
TIGER RAG: Who was in the room during your first face-to-face interview with Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin about being LSU’s new coach?
AUSBERRY: It was myself, Lane Kiffin, John Carmouche (athletic committee chairman with the LSU Board of Supervisors and search committee member) and Julie Cromer (LSU executive deputy athletic director). Jimmy Sexton (Kiffin’s agent) was there, but he wasn’t in the room. The meeting lasted about an hour.
TIGER RAG: Where was the meeting?
AUSBERRY: It was in Mississippi, not far from Oxford.
TIGER RAG: Did you feel like you had a great shot during the interview and immediately afterwards?
AUSBERRY: He was my guy. And I thought, we had a great shot. I felt comfortable about it. I knew deep down this is where he wanted to be. I knew the people we had talking to him – the Booger McFarlands, the Ryan Clarks, the Marcus Spears, the Nick Sabans – all of them were talking to him about what’s the best job out there. And I think he felt it – that LSU was the best job. He wanted to be here. He knew what LSU could do. He talked to Ed Orgeron (former 2019 national champion LSU head coach). I thought we had a good meeting. I wasn’t asking him, “What are you running? What will you do? How will you do it?” I asked, “What do you expect from me as an AD?” And I told him what I expect from him. I said this is where I expect LSU to be. These are positions we need changes, where we need work at. This is what we didn’t do. This is why we’re in the position we’re in now.
He wanted to see the NIL information, the organizational chart, and he asked if we would let him coach his (Ole Miss) team if it went to the playoffs. I said yes. That team played with a lot of heart and kept winning. I said that’s good for our brand. I said, “We’ve got a national championship coach, if they win it.” How many times do you hire a coach and that team makes it to the Final Four? Hell, you would take that any day of the week. That’s a proven winner there.
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