Like it or not, Mike Norvell is staying… for now. It’s not a decision I favored, like most, because he should be fired based on the results he’s produced. The tough reality is that the administration also has a fiduciary duty to avoid bankrupting the athletic department. There is also a coaching market with more demand than supply, so they have made their decision based on the entire picture.
I don’t necessarily agree with the narrative that an administration that just spent $400M on the football program is “unserious” about winning. Mike Norvell just served them a frying pan to the face at the worst possible time financially. Of course, you could argue they should have been more financially prudent and not leveraged themselves so heavily in case disaster struck. They are not entirely blameless either.
Their responsibility is to ensure a good product and to be good financial stewards for the university. Mike Norvell’s job is to produce results on the field. They have given him every resource he needs to win, and unfortunately, that has painted them into a financial corner. We’re basically stuck holding a stock that crashed, and we’re hoping we don’t have to sell for a loss before it rebounds… if it ever does.
So where do you go from here? I think you need to “Mike Norvell-proof” the program (or any coach for that matter). We’re stuck in a bad situation that we have to try and make the best of. Knowing that, these are the main “changes” I hope are coming to FSU.
Start with hiring a real GM. Think Jim Nagy at OU, Ron Rivera at Cal, and Andrew Luck at Stanford. This model mirrors professional sports to manage roster building, player evaluation, recruiting, fundraising, and NIL management. You need someone outside of the head coach to oversee the program in this new and very complex era of college football. This will be an important hire for FSU if they go that route.
With that role also comes the authority to implement staff changes. For example, if I were the GM, and I couldn’t fire Norvell, the first changes I’d make are the QB coach, LB/Special Teams coach, and current GM. The results speak for themselves, and these are underperforming staff members that Mike Norvell elected to keep through the last set of changes. Obviously, the GM and head coach will have to work together, but it’s better than one person calling all of the shots, especially if his decisions led us to this point in the first place.
Next, invest heavily in the scouting and recruiting department and NIL funding. Most coaches can win with talent; even Mike Norvell has. It’s also time to pay up for a game-changing quarterback. We’re probably getting a new OC anyway. Not saying you have to pay $8M for Carson Beck like Miami, but getting DJU and TC from the bargain bin isn’t cutting it. I mean, let’s be honest. This team is probably a good quarterback and a few good linebackers away from being an 8 or 9-win team, and we likely wouldn’t be having this conversation to begin with.
The problem is, Mike Norvell has not shown the ability to consistently land top talent through high school recruiting, which has always been the foundation for his struggles. He hit the portal lottery once and now can’t stop going back, hoping for similar results, and it just hasn’t panned out as it did in 2022 and 2023. He’s not going to turn into an elite recruiter out of nowhere. So, in the meantime, build a bulletproof recruiting department around him, headed by the new GM with the NIL resources to bring in those players. No matter who the head coach is, in my opinion, getting elite talent on the roster is priority number one.
NIL is just the way things work nowadays, and we’re seeing programs use guaranteed NIL budgets as bargaining chips when trying to hire new coaches. FSU has to get past the Rev Share cap and start spending like the elite program it wants to be. Granted, they are spending more than some of the programs they are losing to, but the investment needs to be made.
They need to build a framework around Norvell so that he is A piece of the puzzle, but not THE piece of the puzzle. This is why the NFL expects immediate results after a coaching change, unlike college, where you have to reboot the entire program because the head coach runs everything. This gives you more stability through change in the future. The game has changed significantly, and this appears to be where things are headed anyway. FSU athletic director Michael Alford has ties to Oklahoma, so I’m sure he knows about this model.
If they make these changes, and Norvell still can’t produce wins, then make a change the second you feel it’s affordable. The truth is, none of us knows the athletic department’s finances. At least this investment wouldn’t be putting dead money on the books. It’s a framework investment that will last long past Mike Norvell’s tenure, however long it ends up being. No matter what, the standard needs to be raised back to where it belongs, and the circuit breakers to fire Norvell if he does not meet that standard in the near future need to be put in place.
One issue I have is that they’re obviously making these changes because they don’t believe in Mike Norvell being able to win without them, which is a red flag in its own right, but if they can’t afford to fire him, what else are they supposed to do? To put it frankly, if he’s going to be a boat anchor you can’t afford to part ways with, build a big enough boat to drag him to success.
At the end of the day, FSU has made its decision, so all that matters now is how do we fix this? I don’t believe Mike is the guy long-term, and I would have fired him long before now, but as we’ve said all along, it’s not what we want; it’s what the administration will actually do. We don’t know how long FSU will remain committed to keeping Mike Norvell, but whether it’s for 2026 or beyond, if they are going this route, you would want the new GM in place before making the move anyway.
This is just my attempt at trying to think of a rational solution to where we go from here. He isn’t meeting the standard, and I’m as upset and frustrated as every other booster and fan, but I’m still going to support the program, and all I want is to see us start winning again. I’ll be anxious to see what changes are actually made going forward. Thanks for reading and Go Noles!!
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