By TODD HORNE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR
When LSU stole Scott Woodward from Texas A&M in 2019, Tiger fans lost their minds.
The guy who helped raise three-quarters of a billion dollars in College Station and turned the 12th Man Foundation into a money cannon was finally coming home. The prodigal son with the Rolodex, the handshakes and the “don’t worry, we’ll find the money” swagger was back in Baton Rouge.
LSU wasn’t just hiring an athletics director. It was hiring a closer.
The one guy who could outspend the entire SEC and never look back.
And he spent, all right.
Good Lord, did he spend.
The Golden Age… On Credit
Start with this number: $88.2 million.
That’s how much the Tiger Athletic Foundation shipped straight into LSU athletics in 2024, according to the most recent audit. One year earlier, in 2023, TAF wrote a check for only $36 million.
In 12 months, LSU went from “healthy SEC heavyweight” to “Texas and Georgia money.” That’s Ohio State level support. That’s “we don’t ask what it costs, we ask how fast you can build it.”
And the trophies followed.
• Baseball national titles in 2023 and 2025.
• Women’s basketball national title in 2023.
• Gymnastics national title in 2024.
Walk around campus and you see the billboards for Woodward’s decisions:
• A new football operations palace.
• A gymnastics cathedral.
• A baseball Taj Mahal.
• NIL infrastructure fat enough to choke a horse.
Death Valley shook. The PMAC shook. Alex Box shook. Three different sports cut down nets or dogpiled in Omaha. “Best AD in America” started to sound less like a talking point and more like a verdict.
Nobody wanted to see the bar tab.
Then the next page of the audit hit like a fourth‑and‑goal stuff.
Where Did the Cushion Go?
Here’s what the 2024 TAF report also says:
• Cash reserves dropped by $24 million in a single year.
• Operating cash flow was cut roughly in half.
• TAF finished the year with $50.8 million in cash and $107 million in bonds still outstanding, including a $37 million bullet payment due between 2030 and 2034.
For most of the last decade, TAF had been the adult in the room.
From 2013 to 2022:
• Bonded debt came down from roughly $282 million to about $118 million.
• Cash climbed steadily, peaking around $74.5 million.
• Annual support to athletics lived in a sustainable band — $25–45 million a year — enough to keep LSU in the SEC arms race without burning the furniture to heat the house.
That was the model Woodward inherited.
He walked in, looked at that beautifully balanced machine, and red‑lined it until the rods started knocking.
In 2024, LSU didn’t just spend big. It spent the cushion.
The band’s still playing, but the lights are flickering.
And we haven’t even gotten to the wrecking ball that’s swinging in 2025.
The Bill That Hasn’t Hit Yet
Those 2024 numbers? They do not include the carnage that’s coming onto the books in this calendar year.
• Brian Kelly’s buyout – $54 million if the courts and the contract have the final say, or something just south of that if LSU’s lawyers can chip it down.
• Assistant‑coach severance and staff clean‑out checks.
• The eight‑ or nine‑figure commitment it will take to get LSU’s next football coach to sign on the dotted line.
Now add in the new world we all pretended was theoretical until it wasn’t:
• $20–22 million a year in revenue‑sharing payments that every SEC school will start cutting directly to players in the 2025–26 window.
Do the math in round numbers.
You can very easily get to $80–100 million in fresh obligations over the next 18 months. Not hypothetical facility dreams. Not “maybe” money. Real checks. Real calendar. Real due dates.
And you’re asking an athletic department that just torched $24 million in reserves in one year to eat that, while carrying $107 million in bonds and that $37 million bullet staring at you from the early 2030s.
Texas just stuffed another $48 million in fresh pledges under the mattress.
Georgia and Alabama are sitting on cash mountains.
LSU spent the mountain.
The coaching‑change invoice hasn’t even been printed.
“Scotty Boy” and the Governor
If you’ve been wondering why Governor Jeff Landry aimed both barrels at Scott Woodward after the Kelly firing, the audit just handed you the answer in black and white.
Is there politics in that anger? Of course. This is Louisiana.
Is there also a real, rational, fiscal freak‑out? Absolutely.
Landry didn’t invent the Kelly contract. He didn’t tell Woodward to:
• Push TAF transfers from $36M to $88M in a single year,
• Vaporize $24M in reserves,
• And staple a $54M parachute to a coach who was always going to be judged on playoff appearances, not just bowl trips.
He walked into office, looked at the same balance sheet Tiger Rag just looked at, and saw:
• A flagship university with:
◦ thinner cash,
◦ heavier debt,
◦ and a nine‑figure coaching mess ready to come off the printer.
You don’t have to like Landry’s politics to understand why he looked at Woodward and saw a guy who threw the most expensive party in LSU history, then handed the State of Louisiana the tab.
Verge Ausberry’s Inheritance
That brings us to Verge Ausberry.
He didn’t build this spending spree. He didn’t write the Kelly contract. He didn’t design the bond ladder. But he’s the one holding the bag.
He inherited:
• The shiniest trophy case in LSU history.
• The prettiest set of facilities in the SEC.
• And the emptiest athletic reserve Baton Rouge has seen in years.
The next big fundraising pitch out of TAF is not going to be about:
• Waterfall lockers,
• Sleep‑number recruiting suites,
• Or rooftop party decks and tiger‑tailgate plazas.
It’s going to sound a lot more like:
“Help us pay off Brian Kelly.
Help us cover revenue sharing.
Help us keep the bondholders from taking the keys in 2032.”
That’s a very different kind of sales job.
The Hangover vs. the Standard
Here’s the blunt truth:
Scott Woodward delivered.
• Five national championships in four sports (if you credit Woodward with the 2020 football national title even he arrived only months before).
• A facility footprint that can line up next to anyone’s.
• A few years where LSU really did look and feel like it could simply out‑money its way to the front of every line.
He also guaranteed that the bill for all of it would land on the next guy’s desk.
You can love the trophies and still be honest about the math.
LSU is not poor. LSU is not about to shut down football. But LSU has spent the last few years living like Texas with Louisiana’s revenue base, and the tab has arrived.
The question now isn’t whether LSU should stop chasing championships.
The question is whether LSU can keep acting like a national champion while finally learning to act like an adult with its contracts, its debt and its cash.
Because the $88 million hangover isn’t really about TAF’s last party.
It’s about whether LSU can keep being what it thinks it is, without blowing up the next 10 years to pay for the last five.
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