The image of Florida State coach Mike Norvell frozen in place, almost expressionless as he tried to process his shock and anger over the Seminoles getting snubbed by the College Football Playoff last December, is the moment when everything changed.
Before that, it all seemed possible for the Seminoles. They weren’t just in the conversation to win a national championship, they were here to stay. The brand had been rescued. The tradition had been re-established. The good times were only beginning. Chop on, baby.
But what happened on Dec. 3, 2023 had an emotional reach nobody could have anticipated.
To the sensible, logical college football fan, it was not a massive surprise that 13-0 Florida State — without injured quarterback Jordan Travis — was left out of the playoff in favor of SEC champion Alabama. Maybe it seemed unfair depending on which way your fandom leans, but excluding an excellent team without its quarterback in favor of another excellent team that had taken down No. 1 Georgia was not exactly suspicious.
And yet, the entire Florida State apparatus — from its fan base all the way up to its athletics director, Michael Alford — treated the snub like one big conspiracy theory.
It harassed ESPN commentator Kirk Herbstreit, who had nothing to do with it.
It blamed ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, who could not have changed the decision even if he had snuck into the CFP committee room and personally lobbied each one of the members.
It kicked and screamed and wouldn’t let it go for days, which turned into weeks, which became months.
And the Florida State program never recovered.
From 13-0 after last year’s ACC championship game, the Seminoles have now lost four in a row including Saturday’s 20-12 disaster against Memphis, the program Norvell coached for four seasons before landing the promotion to Florida State.
That means the 2024 season is over in Tallahassee, for all intents and purposes. It means that some of the typical excuses — they weren’t ready to play, they overlooked their opponent, they just need time to gel — are all out the window.
It’s just a bad team.
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Across the ACC, there will of course be a lot of laughter and schadenfreude. Florida State is currently suing to get out of the contract that grants the school’s broadcast rights to the ACC until 2036, and if the Seminoles somehow win that lawsuit, it could very well spell the end of the conference as a power player in college sports. Maybe they need to go to an easier league?
All kidding aside, there’s a more immediate issue to reckon with: What happened to Florida State?
There are two main theories, which probably work in concert to some degree.
The first is practical. Heavily reliant on the transfer portal to stack its roster last year with stars like receiver Keon Coleman and defensive lineman Jared Verse, the 17 transfers Florida State brought in this year — led by quarterback DJ Uaigalelei — just aren’t adequately replacing their top-end production. They can’t run the ball at all, they don’t throw it well, and the defense isn’t living up to expectations. Other than that, it’s all working great!
But severe year-to-year variance may end up being more common in this era where so many programs play the transfer game. Sometimes you’re going to hit the jackpot, sometimes you’re going to make some bad evaluations and come up empty.
But Florida State’s issues this year seem so profound, there has to be a deeper problem. That brings us to the second theory.
Is it possible that Florida State, collectively, just never got over what happened at the end of last season? Did the coaches, the administration, the returning players simply fail to mentally turn the page and prepare for 2024 with the same hunger and verve that they had going into 2023?
Did the College Football Playoff committee, in essence, break the Seminoles?
The answer to that question is important. Already facing significant financial pressures brought on by its desire to exit the ACC, Florida State cannot snap its fingers and make a coaching change. It will owe Norvell more than $60 million after this season. They are wedded to each other for the foreseeable future.
But now that the 2024 season is basically in the dust bin, it’s time for a deep dive at FSU. Something has gone seriously wrong in the last 9½ months, and Norvell must fix it.
Can he?
That question is why 0-3 Florida State ranks No. 1 on the Misery Index, a weekly measurement of which fan bases are feeling the most angst.
Four more in misery
Florida: The Seminoles’ in-state rivals are even deeper in the mud than they are, but the only thing saving the Gators from being No. 1 this week is that expectations weren’t high in Gainesville to begin with. Still, it’s a true illustration of Billy Napier’s current predicament that the Gators have failed to even clear the lowest possible bar anyone could have set for them. Saturday’s limp 33-20 loss in the Swamp to Texas A&M was even more one-sided than the final score and illustrated one of the main issues with the Gators. They don’t play hard. They don’t step on the field with as much passion or confidence as their opponents. They have no aura. And this was one of the few games on their schedule that, on paper, they had a great chance to win! But when you are on the wrong end of a 3-0 turnover ratio and make just 2-of-9 third downs, you’re not going to beat anyone with a pulse.
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South Carolina: Where would you start a list of regrets about the Gamecocks’ 36-33 loss to LSU? Blowing a 17-0 lead? Missing a 49-yard field goal to tie the game after a poor play call right before that to not get a little closer for kicker Alex Herrera? A pick-six with six minutes remaining that was called back due to a penalty on the interception return? The ankle injury to starting quarterback LaNorris Sellers? It’s hard to say South Carolina was the better team on Saturday because they committed a whole lot of penalties (13 for 123 yards), had too many turnovers (three) and didn’t have an effective passing game to get them out of trouble (11-of-20 for 155 yard). But there’s little doubt South Carolina should have taken one of the many chances it had to close out LSU, which is a tough pill to swallow when your next three SEC games are against Ole Miss, Alabama and Oklahoma.
Mississippi State: When athletics directors feel like their reputation is on the line in a coaching search, they will often default to people they know. But sometimes, comfort and familiarity is actually a bad thing because it obscures the truth. And the truth is that no other college program in the country would have hired Jeff Lebby for a job the magnitude of Mississippi State. Zac Selmon did. And he did it largely because of a preexisting relationship from their overlapping time at Oklahoma when Selmon was the athletic department’s No. 2 and Lebby was offensive coordinator under Brent Venables. But the strange thing is, Lebby wasn’t the most popular guy in town for his two years in Norman. And his track record before that includes stints under Lane Kiffin and his father-in-law Art Briles, which is problematic for entirely different reasons. Point being, Lebby never really established offensive bona fides on his own. Now he’s the head coach at Mississippi State who is 1-2 and just lost 41-17 at home to Toledo.
Air Force: There haven’t been a lot of terrible seasons in nearly two decades under Troy Calhoun, but this might be shaping up as one of the worst he’s experienced. The Falcons are 1-2 after a 31-3 wipeout at Baylor in which they gained just 218 yards of offense and tried three different quarterbacks without much success. This came merely one week after Air Force lost 17-7 to San Jose State and had just 197 yards. So there’s clearly a short-term problem that may or may not be fixed this season. But there’s also a bigger picture issue for Air Force, which has won 61 percent of its games under Calhoun. In the transfer portal/NIL era, recruiting is tougher than ever at service academies. And now Air Force leadership has to assess the landscape after key members of the Mountain West defected this week to the Pac-12. Does Air Force stick around in a new-look (but lesser) Mountain West, seek Pac-12 membership or try to join Army and Navy in the American? It’s a lot to think about at a pivotal moment in the program’s future.
Miserable but not miserable enough
Georgia: So, um, what exactly was that? It wasn’t a loss, thankfully for Bulldogs fans. But a 13-12 win over Kentucky — one week after the Wildcats lost by 25 to South Carolina — raises some questions about the ceiling of this No. 1-ranked team. It’s not totally foreign for Georgia to have a shaky performance early in the season. If you remember two years ago, the Dawgs were fortunate to escape Missouri with a 26-22 win after trailing in the fourth quarter and then rolled to the title. But earlier this week, cornerback Daniel Harris became the sixth Georgia player in 2024 to be arrested for a driving offense. The program has had more than 25 such citations since the start of 2023. It’s an embarrassing trend, and the fact that it hasn’t stopped reflects poorly on coach Kirby Smart. Is lack of discipline off the field seeping into the on-field product? Stay tuned.
UCLA: It said a lot about the current state of the Bruins that they were underdogs at home to Indiana on Saturday. But even for a program used to underachieving, there aren’t going to be a whole lot of results that stand out more than losing 42-13 to Indiana in the Rose Bowl. Are the Hoosiers really that good? Seems like wishful thinking for Bruins fans. UCLA is just out of its depth in the Big Ten, particularly coming off the Chip Kelly era where the program flat-out did not recruit to a Pac-12 level much less put together a roster that can compete in the Big Ten. UCLA had just 238 yards of offense in this one, and all we can say is good luck to first-year coach DeShaun Foster. He’s going to need it.
Vanderbilt: Remember all those good vibes from beating Virginia Tech in the season opener? They’re gone, thanks to a 36-32 loss at Georgia State on Saturday. On one hand, why is an SEC team playing a road game against a Sun Belt team in the first place? On the other hand, it wasn’t a complicated assignment. Georgia State barely beat Chattanooga last week and lost decisively to Georgia Tech in its season opener. Still, Vanderbilt finally took the lead with under two minutes remaining and couldn’t hold it as the Panthers marched 75 yards in seven plays to score the winning touchdown with 15 seconds left. Same as it ever was for the Commodores.