Florida State's athletic department is staring down a debt load that has become part of the school's bigger fight for financial footing in college sports.
Florida State closed fiscal year 2025 with $437 million in athletics-related debt, up from $237 million the year before, and the athletic debt made up 71% of the university's reported $617 million in institutional debt. FSU's total athletics spending also jumped to $208.2 million in the same window.
So what is this debt, and why did it spike?
Florida's Division of Bond Finance lists $306.335 million in Florida State University Athletics Association revenue bonds tied to building athletics facilities at FSU.
A Florida Board of Governors resolution on the football operations facility describes a plan to issue revenue bonds up to $116 million for a roughly 150,000-square-foot football operations building, with all of the expected amenities. A separate Board of Governors document on debt service coverage references a $265 million football stadium renovation project and lays out projected pledged revenues and debt service coverage assumptions.
Essentially, Florida State is doing what a lot of power-conference programs have done for two decades: borrowing heavily to renovate stadium space, add premium seating and build football infrastructure, then trying to pay it back with a mix of tickets, donations, sponsorship-type revenue and conference distributions.
How does Miami compare?
The tricky part is that Miami is a private school, so you don't get the same athletics-debt disclosures.
What we do know is that Miami holds $7.77 billion in total assets and $2.98 billion in total liabilities in its latest year of extracted financial data (fiscal year ending in 2024). That is not an athletics debt figure, and it includes the university's broader enterprise, but it does show Miami is operating on a very large financial base.
Miami said its Athletics Development office raised more than $26 million during the 2022-23 fiscal year, with donor counts also rising.
Is Florida State's situation common?
Across the Power Four, schools have piled into facility spending to keep pace in recruiting and revenue generation. Debt is often the tool that make things possible. But the risk in the ACC is notable because schools are trying to fund SEC- and Big Ten-style infrastructure without consistently matching SEC- and Big Ten-level annual media distributions.
Regardless of the different circumstances across the nation — plenty of other schools have reported high numbers similar to FSU — it is fairly common, but the numbers are mind-boggling.