FSU is without question the singular heavy-hitter in Atlantic Coast Conference football, far above Clemson ($51.7 gross revenue) which does not make the top 25. In fact, no other full ACC member appears on this list, making it the only Power Five conference with just one program. Despite a nondescript (10-3) 2016 season by Seminoles’ standards, FSU made a major gross-revenue leap from the previous fiscal year and turned a $38.2M profit despite substantial expenses on $48.4M.
These lists are rarely accurate because everyone does the accounting differently. Schools like FSU have private booster organizations that don't release financials so it's tough to get accurate numbers for lists like this. And if a rich donor chips in a lot of money one year for a facility is that counted or not? How about accounting for broadcast contracts, apparel deals, marketing rights, post-season payouts, etc.? Some lists do, some don't.
Don't get why people say money doesn't matter by citing Texas. They were really good and will be really good again in the near future. But money can't make up for lousy coaching hires and a poor administration. But when you have a lot of money coming in, a top notch administration and an elite coach you get Alabama.
Money is one part of the formula but it's really difficult to be consistently good without it.
Regarding the issue of money mattering, I think many, if not most of us take for granted the efficiency that FSU applies to revenue. While we all hear it repeated, the fact is FSU has consistently done more with less better than any P5 school. But we also did way more with less for ~65 years before the creation of the P5 compared to all the others. For that reason, I speculate that many FSU supporters have been conditioned to believe that we can do it despite the revenue gap. While I have been close to the program for >55 years and have seen FSU do some things w/ limited resources that were nothing short of miraculous, I'm skeptical that we can keep that streak alive indefinitely. 2 major forces are coming at us in the next decade. The first one is the most obvious: the expanding revenue gap. The second is much more subtle, and more certain. The generation that built and took FSU's middling program with ambivalent administrative and Booster support in 1974 to the elite level we now enjoy are, like me, getting older. In the next decade the names, influence and expertise that lived the rise of the Tribe since '74 will be well past retirement age. Some have already retired. It is a whole generation of volunteers, administrators, alums, adopted chiefs, faculty and Boosters that will be moving on. (e.g. Read Unconquered latest edition about the Golden Chiefs) The institutional value of efficiency and creativity that are the pillars of our financial success over the last ~6 decades will need new blood that honors and emulates these values and strategies or FSU will quickly fall from the highest levels of competition. Without them, or with them but at a reduced level, FSU will be even more vulnerable to the financial squeeze the revenue gap creates and the problem will only intensify.
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