{"id":58059,"date":"2025-11-23T22:52:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T22:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/58059\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T22:52:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T22:52:08","slug":"florida-state-retaining-mike-norvell-shows-noles-expectations-arent-what-they-used-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/58059\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida State retaining Mike Norvell shows Noles\u2019 expectations aren\u2019t what they used to be"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Florida State announced Sunday head coach\u00a0Mike Norvell would return for 2026<\/a>, it\u2019s worth revisiting what the Seminoles said the last time they made an in-season announcement about an embattled head coach with an unimpressive record but enormous buyout.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrankly, 6-6 isn\u2019t good enough \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what then-athletic director David Coburn said the day after he fired Willie Taggart and signed off on a buyout (up to $18 million) that\u00a0still ranks among the largest ever<\/a>. Taggart was 4-5 in Year 2 and coming off a double-digit loss to middling Miami. Norvell is 5-6 in Year 6 and coming off a double-digit loss to middling NC State.<\/p>\n

Florida State\u2019s board of trustees chairperson, Peter Collins, said in a statement Sunday that the on-field results \u201chave been far from acceptable to the FSU standard.\u201d But by retaining Norvell, who replaced Taggart after the 2019 season, FSU has accepted that standard: 6-6 is now, apparently, good enough. Maybe the Seminoles literally moved their goalposts during their recent nine-figure renovation to Doak Campbell Stadium<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The argument would be different if this season looked like an aberration. It\u2019s not. If 6-6 isn\u2019t good enough, then Norvell has failed in four of his six years. Even if we blame his 3-6 inaugural season on the COVID-19 shutdown that began his first spring, he still went 5-7 the next year and 2-10 last year. Now he must beat Florida this weekend to make a bowl game.<\/p>\n

This season has been particularly baffling. Florida State beat mighty Alabama by 14 in the opener but lost to Stanford\u2019s interim coach last month. Friday at NC State, the Noles muffed a kick that bounced off an FSU player\u2019s helmet and was recovered by the punter \u2026 then muffed another punt moments later. It was a damning showing for a coach who promised on Day 1 that special teams would form the Seminoles\u2019 backbone and for a program that should be strong enough to overcome a bad break or two, especially six years into a regime.<\/p>\n

Norvell\u2019s entire tenure has been similarly confounding: The same coach and same staff that went 13-0 in 2023\u00a0suffered one of the largest collapses in college football history the next year.\u00a0<\/a>Take the broader view, though\u00a0\u2014 the kind of \u201ccomprehensive assessment\u201d current athletic director Michael Alford promised last month<\/a> \u2014 and you can find a logical explanation. What if 13-0 and 2-10 were\u00a0both flukes? Split the difference, and Norvell is a six-to-eight-win coach. That\u2019s what his 38-33 record says he is. That\u2019s what he\u2019ll likely be this season.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s good enough for Florida State, apparently.<\/p>\n

The Seminoles, of course, had other factors to consider beyond the record.\u00a0More than 55 million of them, depending on when his buyout would have taken effect and the mitigation that would have come from Norvell\u2019s next job. FSU administrators acknowledged as much in Sunday\u2019s announcement. Alford cited the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars into football facilities and other upgrades while stressing their responsibility to put FSU in the best position possible \u201cnot just today, but for years to come.\u201d Collins brought up administrators\u2019 \u201cresponsibilities as stewards of program revenues\u201d and the need to figure out how to best allocate finite resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will address performance deficiencies in the program,\u201d Collins said. \u201cThese deficiencies may include structural changes to the very large and complex program FSU football has become, and these areas are where we will focus and invest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Translation: $60 million can and should be better spent on players or front-office changes instead of paying Norvell and the rest of the coaching staff not to coach.<\/p>\n

Perhaps they\u2019re right. This era of player compensation is too new to give us many historical precedents, but after Oklahoma\u00a0doubled down on Brent Venables in the offseason<\/a>, the Sooners are one win away<\/a> from the College Football Playoff<\/a>. Florida State might have better luck trying to find its own John Mateer with that approach than entering a crowded coaching market that already includes Florida, Penn State, LSU and Auburn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But what evidence does FSU have to show that Norvell is the right person to lead that run? His recruiting classes have consistently ranked among the Seminoles\u2019 worst in the Rivals\/247Sports era.\u00a0Tuesday marks the two-year anniversary of his last road win. He has lost 17 of his last 22 games against FBS opponents and 13 of his last 16 conference games in a pedestrian ACC. His overall conference record of 22-26 (.458 winning percentage) isn\u2019t much better than Taggart\u2019s (6-8 record, .429 winning percentage).<\/p>\n

Despite the on-field improvements from last year\u2019s rock bottom, Florida State still sits outside the top 25 nationally in advanced metrics like ESPN\u2019s SP+<\/a>. It\u2019s possible coaching continuity and more roster turnover will lead to a leap forward next fall, or that additional investments could address other issues lurking under the hood. It\u2019s also possible that FSU will waste a year in limbo as the landscape hurdles toward the next round of conference realignment<\/a>. The massive contract extension Florida State gave \u2014 and probably had to give \u2014 Norvell to keep Alabama from poaching him to replace Nick Saban left the Seminoles with no good options Sunday.<\/p>\n

The one they chose is an about-face from where FSU was six years ago when Coburn fired Taggart. The administration has changed since then, but the expectations of a three-time national championship program were supposed to remain the same.\u00a0They haven\u2019t, no matter what the press releases say. While 6-6 wasn\u2019t good enough for Taggart, the Seminoles just showed that mediocrity is acceptable for the man hired to replace him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Florida State announced Sunday head coach\u00a0Mike Norvell would return for 2026, it\u2019s worth revisiting what the Seminoles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[143,28,30,29,3731],"class_list":{"0":"post-58059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-headlines","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-florida-state-seminoles"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}