Matthew LaBorde has spent 15 years inside LSU Athletics, but the most consequential period of that tenure may have been the last five. He became the department’s chief financial officer in 2021, almost precisely when the economic foundation of major college athletics began shifting beneath everyone responsible for managing it. The transfer portal and name, image and likeness compensation arrived, conference realignment accelerated, the College Football Playoff expanded, direct revenue sharing with athletes followed and the Southeastern Conference eventually moved to a nine-game football schedule.

LaBorde has therefore occupied the CFO’s office during a remarkable transformation. He isn’t studying the changing business of college sports from the outside. He has been responsible for forecasting LSU’s revenues and expenses while many of the assumptions underlying those forecasts have become less reliable.

That was what interested me most when LaBorde joined us on Tiger Rag Radio. The obvious subject was LSU’s ongoing examination of new financial structures and the meetings surrounding those discussions, including those held at the Governor’s Mansion. LaBorde understandably wasn’t going to disclose what LSU President Wade Rousse and others may eventually present publicly. He said he would leave that discussion to those leading the effort and that there would be “a time and place to discuss that further.”

What LaBorde was willing to discuss turned out to be more useful for understanding why LSU is exploring something different in the first place. He said conversations about alternative financial approaches didn’t suddenly begin because of one difficult fiscal year or one recent proposal.

“There has been discussions, but in reality, there’s been discussions for the last several years. Everybody knows the financial landscape has changed.”

LSU, he added, has a responsibility to listen to “the creative financial options” available and consider whatever might put the department in a position to succeed.

That provides important context for everything LSU is considering now. The problem isn’t simply that college athletics has become more expensive, although it certainly has. The deeper problem is that it has become considerably more difficult to predict. Higher expenses can be modeled when a CFO knows what they are likely to be. Stable revenue streams can be matched against those expenses, capital can be allocated and an organization can plan several years into the future. The challenge becomes very different when the underlying rules of the business can change during the period being forecast.

LaBorde described exactly that problem.

“If I go back ten years, we used to map out three to five years and have a pretty good indication of where we’d be.”

Today, LSU can be “one lawsuit, one NCAA rule away from absolutely flipping everything on its head,” forcing administrators to reconsider projections they previously believed were reasonable.

“You’ve got to rip it up and start again.”

For me, that was the most revealing answer of the interview because it gets beneath the individual issues dominating college sports at any particular moment. Revenue sharing is an enormous new expense. NIL changed the economics of roster construction. The transfer portal changed how quickly rosters can be assembled and dismantled. Litigation has repeatedly altered the rules under which schools operate. Playoff expansion, conference realignment and television agreements have changed revenue opportunities and competitive incentives. But the common thread running through all of them is uncertainty.

LaBorde said LSU consequently has to remain flexible while trying to anticipate where the industry is headed so it can stay ahead of its competition. That is increasingly the job of a modern college athletics CFO. Financial planning is no longer simply projecting ticket sales, conference distributions, donations and expenses over the next several years. It requires making assumptions about an industry whose economic and regulatory architecture is still being constructed.

That also helps explain why LSU is willing to consider financial structures that would have seemed unnecessary a decade ago. An organization operating in an unstable environment needs more than money. It needs flexibility, access to capital, additional ways to generate revenue and enough freedom to respond when conditions change faster than its original forecasts.

What Is LSU Actually Worth?

The same philosophy emerged when I asked LaBorde what actually creates long-term value for LSU Athletics. With billion-dollar valuations increasingly attached to major athletic departments, it is easy to confuse valuation with cash. LSU isn’t sitting on a billion dollars. The value resides primarily in the future earning capacity of an extraordinarily powerful sports brand.

LaBorde described LSU in precisely those terms.

“We look at LSU as one of the premier brands in the country. We don’t consider ourselves second to anyone.”

Football is obviously “the big driver,” as it is at virtually every major institution, but LaBorde emphasized that LSU’s broader athletic success contributes to the value of the enterprise.

“Getting exposure from our other sports, competing for championships, being in the marquee games, playing deep in the postseason — that drives the brand for LSU and holds us at a high level.”

There is an important business principle contained in that answer. LSU football generates the greatest direct economic power, but the LSU athletic brand operates throughout the year. Baseball reaching Omaha, women’s basketball advancing through March, gymnastics competing for championships and other successful programs repeatedly place LSU before national audiences. Those appearances create attention, and sustained attention increases the commercial power of the larger brand.

Winning, then, has an economic consequence beyond ticket sales associated with any particular game. A championship-caliber athletic department creates more valuable media inventory, more sponsorship opportunities, more donor engagement and a stronger relationship between the institution and its customers. LSU’s objective, LaBorde said, is to put all of its teams in position to compete at the highest level. Doing that becomes considerably harder when the cost of competing at that level continues to rise.

The Buildings Have To Produce More Money, Too

I asked LaBorde how important premium seating, premium experiences and future facility development will be to LSU’s financial future. His answer was immediate.

“Critically important.”

LSU has to put a product on the field that keeps people interested in renewing tickets and purchasing premium experiences, he said, while looking toward professional sports organizations that have become increasingly sophisticated at creating what he called an “elevated atmosphere.”

LaBorde also made an important qualification. LSU can’t build its entire future around wealthy customers and corporations. Premium experiences aren’t for everyone, he said, and LSU has to make sure ordinary supporters can continue attending games and participating in the culture that created the brand in the first place.

That balancing act will become increasingly important because the economics of sports facilities are changing. Capacity still matters, but revenue productivity matters more than it once did. Suites, clubs, hospitality spaces, corporate entertainment, premium food and beverage, sponsorship inventory and year-round events allow an athletic department to generate more revenue without simply adding thousands of seats.

That is the framework through which LSU’s future facility development should be evaluated. A stadium or arena is not merely a place where a team plays. It is a physical asset, and an athletic department facing permanently higher expenses has to determine whether its largest assets are producing all the economic value they reasonably can.

Now Even The Football Schedule Is A Financial Model

LaBorde’s newest responsibility makes the same point in a less obvious place. He now works with football scheduling, a responsibility previously handled for years by Verge Ausberry. Scheduling might seem far removed from financial management until you listen to LaBorde describe what goes into building LSU’s future schedules.

LSU wants seven home games because, as LaBorde put it, the department needs to “make sure we have value for our ticket holders.” It also wants to construct a schedule that gives its football team a reasonable opportunity to reach postseason play. The SEC’s move to nine conference games changes the calculation significantly, particularly while schools are also expected to play another Power Four opponent. Under that model, LSU is left with only two of what LaBorde called the traditional “buy games.”

Those competing interests make scheduling a business exercise as much as a football exercise. A home game creates ticket, concession, hospitality and other revenue. A marquee opponent creates television value and national exposure. A difficult schedule can strengthen LSU’s playoff résumé, but an additional loss can damage it. Meanwhile, season-ticket holders reasonably expect an attractive home schedule in return for the increasingly substantial amount of money required to attend LSU football games.

I asked LaBorde how much data LSU uses in making those decisions. Does the department consider playoff probabilities, television value and revenue before agreeing to future games?

“All those factors come into play.”

His next answer demonstrated how quickly another old assumption about college football is disappearing. LSU historically scheduled major nonconference series eight or even 10 years into the future. LaBorde doesn’t expect that practice to continue at the same level because the transfer portal has made it increasingly difficult to know what an opponent will look like even a year or two from now.

“If I schedule a game four years in advance, well, that team could look completely different in four years. They might look completely different next year, just based on the transfer portal.”

That is essentially the scheduling version of the problem LaBorde described with LSU’s financial forecasts. Information loses value more quickly in a volatile environment. The farther LSU attempts to project into the future, the greater the number of assumptions it has to make about things it cannot control. The opponent can change. The coach can change. Conference membership can change. Playoff criteria can change. Television priorities can change. Even the SEC’s requirement that its teams play another Power Four opponent could change as the playoff evolves.

LaBorde also confirmed that Lane Kiffin and his staff will have considerable input into those decisions. LSU has been talking with members of Kiffin’s staff to understand his philosophy so future scheduling aligns with how he wants to prepare and develop his football team.

That makes sense because scheduling now sits at the intersection of several interests that once could be treated more independently. The athletic department needs home revenue. Television partners need valuable games. Coaches need schedules that help them prepare their teams and reach the playoff. Fans want compelling opponents. The conference has its own scheduling requirements. LSU has to balance all of them.

College Football Has Created A Bad Incentive

The conflict becomes clearest in the way the College Football Playoff evaluates losses. When I asked LaBorde what he would change about college football scheduling nationally, he questioned whether teams receive enough credit for playing difficult opponents. A team can lose a top-five matchup, he noted, while another program plays a substantially weaker schedule and preserves a better record.

“It feels like there’s too much of a focus on the loss column in some of these games.”

At some point, that creates an obvious conclusion for the people building schedules.

“Man, would have been better off just getting a cupcake win and put myself in the playoffs.”

College football has created a peculiar economic contradiction. Television networks want marquee games because marquee games attract audiences. Fans want them because they make the regular season more compelling. Schools can create substantial financial and brand value from them. Yet if the playoff selection system punishes a team more for losing an elite matchup than it rewards that team for playing it, the competitive incentive is to reduce risk.

That is not an LSU problem. It is an industry problem, and it illustrates the larger point LaBorde kept returning to throughout our conversation. The different pieces of college athletics can no longer be managed independently. Finance affects facilities. Facilities affect revenue. Scheduling affects television value and ticket sales. Scheduling also affects playoff probability. Playoff appearances increase brand value. Brand value creates revenue opportunities. Revenue determines how aggressively an athletic department can invest in winning.

Everything connects.

This Is What LSU Is Really Trying To Solve

LaBorde never told us exactly what LSU is considering in its ongoing financial discussions, and I didn’t expect him to. Those details eventually will have to be evaluated on their own terms, including who invests, what LSU contributes, how revenues are shared, who controls the entity, how an investor exits and what LSU receives in return for whatever economic rights it grants.

But the interview provided something necessary for evaluating that transaction whenever the details become public. It explained the business problem LSU is trying to solve.

The athletic department LaBorde joined 15 years ago operated in an environment where administrators could project three to five years ahead with reasonable confidence and schedule football opponents almost a decade into the future. The athletic department he helps manage today operates in an environment where a lawsuit can destroy a financial forecast, the transfer portal can destroy an assumption about an opponent and a change to the playoff can alter the value of a football schedule.

That is why LSU is looking at creative financial options. It is why premium experiences have become critically important. It is why scheduling has become a data-driven exercise involving revenue and playoff probability. And it is why flexibility may be becoming one of the most valuable assets LSU Athletics possesses.

LaBorde said LSU is trying to anticipate where college athletics is heading so the department can remain ahead of its competition. After listening to him explain how thoroughly the business has changed around him, the strategy behind that statement becomes clearer.

LSU isn’t simply trying to finance another season. It is trying to build an athletic enterprise capable of adapting to whatever college sports becomes next.