I Hope Mike Norvell Is Right
What to make of where the Florida State Seminoles stand heading into the 2026-27 college football season.
It was not that long ago that Florida State head football coach Mike Norvell was on top of the college football coaching landscape. Following the 2023-24 college football season, Norvell was not only reportedly in the mix to replace the greatest college football coach of all time, Nick Saban, at the University of Alabama, one of the greatest college football programs of all time, but he also had just gone 23-4 across two seasons in Tallahassee. It was understood at the time that Norvell was one of the best head coaches in the sport. (The same was true around that time for Wisconsin’s Luke Fickell, just a year early, but that’s a story for another day.) Now, from the outside looking in, it seems like the end of the line for Norvell at Florida State is as close as it’s ever been. Can you imagine telling a Florida State fan after the 2023-24 season everything that happened the following two seasons, actually, well, you know, happened?
At the time, Norvell not leaving Florida State for Alabama felt like a major win for the Seminoles. He even won the Bear Bryant Coach of the Year honor that same offseason. He won ACC Coach of the Year, something a Florida State head football coach had not done since Bowden won the award in 1997. It was all going great until it wasn’t. The contract extension to keep Norvell at Florida State long-term was massive, yes, but the huge financial commitment ostensibly signaled that the Seminoles, like where rival Miami is now with Mario Cristobal, were back.
Flash forward two offseasons later, and Florida State is now coming off back-to-back seasons in which it went a combined 7-17, which included a brutal 2-10 blemish in the 2024 season, the school’s fewest amount of wins since the 1974 season, long before the school joined the ACC. In my 35 years of watching, writing, and reading about sports on this planet, the drastic pendulum swing between the 2023 Florida State Seminoles and the 2024 Florida State Seminoles might take the cake as the biggest head-scratching surprise. It was a disaster of a season in every respect, and this was a program exactly one year prior that could have very well won the national championship had its star quarterback not gotten injured and lost for the season.
Last season, Norvell and the Seminoles got the train back on the track, at least a tad. The offseason hirings of Tony White to call the defense and Gus Malzahn to call the offense were both interesting and wise. The former is back for Year 2, while the latter rode off into the sunset as one of the best offensive minds this sport has seen this century. Although it was ultimately Washington’s Kalen DeBoer who replaced Saban at Alabama, it was Norvell who beat DeBoer in Tallahassee to kick off last season in a stunning upset. It was one of the best college football moments in the regular season last season. The ‘Noles smashed a nine-win Wake Forest team at the Doak. They lost a one-score game to the National Championship runner-up in Miami. They also lost to a dreadful Stanford team on the road. They got blown out in Gainesville against an interim Florida head football coach to conclude the season. All in all, it was a mixed bag for Norvell and the Seminoles.
2026 will be Norvell’s third season since the special 2023-24 campaign at Florida State. With all the changes to the sport, particularly NIL, it’s never been harder to gauge how good or bad a job any coach is doing right now. Did Fickell, who made the College Football Playoff as a G5 head football coach before expansion to twelve teams at Cincinnati, forget how to coach once he got to Madison? Did Mike Gundy or Dabo Swinney, two of the best coaches the sport has seen this century, forget how to coach the last couple of seasons in Stillwater or at Clemson? Norvell has seen the most drastic swings in Tallahassee, but had he been named the successor to Saban at Alabama, what are people saying about the guy who still maintains an overall head coaching record of 76-49? Was the guy who was regarded as a top-5 head coach in all of college football now one of the worst in the P4 two years later?
It all just doesn’t compute.
We’ll never know the answer to the question of how Norvell would have fared the last two seasons in Tuscaloosa. What we do know, though, is that Norvell’s comments at the ACC Spring Meetings were hopeful. With Malzhan’s retirement this offseason, Norvell will be calling plays for the Seminoles this fall. Norvell spoke about the upcoming season and reportedly said, “I expect this year to be the best year of his life.” This perspective is both a bit fascinating and a bit inspiring. The results of the last two seasons have put Norvell in what seems to be a perilous place going into this season. And yet, Norvell is seemingly choosing to take the last two years in stride and ride into the 2026 season with optimism and belief.
I don’t pretend to have any idea how successful the Florida State offense will be with Norvell calling plays and Ashton Daniels under center. However, I do know that I hope it works out for Norvell and for Daniels, the latter of whom has been in some truly awful offensive situations the last couple of seasons at Auburn and Stanford, respectively. The same was true last season when Malzahn and Norvell got the band back together and rolled with former Ware County great Thomas Castellanos under center.
I believe that Norvell is still a great head football coach. Maybe he reminds people of that this season in Tallahassee, or maybe he reminds people of that at his next stop, like Dan Mullen reminded folks in Las Vegas this past season. Norvell’s attitude is the right one to have, and his decision to bet on himself this fall and do so with both hope and joy after how much has gone wrong since that magical 2023 season is one of the best offseason storylines of the 2026 college football season.