Greg McElroy reacts to Florida State retaining Mike Norvell for 2026

Following the news that Florida State is backing head coach Mike Norvell for the time being, ESPN analyst Greg McElroy broke down the decision. There’s a lot that went into it.

But for the former Alabama quarterback turned analyst, it’s pretty simple, really. It was a math problem.

“The buyout for Mike Norvell was entirely too prohibitive. That’s what it came down to,” McElroy said. “They can say it’s about football. They can say, ‘Oh, we just need to make some changes, we need to do this, we need to do that,’ when in reality he’s owed $72 million and his buyout is expecting to pay him about 85% of that remaining value. And his contract runs all the way through 2031.”

So, right or wrong, Florida State will move forward with Mike Norvell leading the ship. He has proven he can win at a high level already.

What Norvell hasn’t necessarily shown is stability. Consistency. McElroy hit on that.

“Another big retention that was announced just in the last 48, 72 hours is Florida State,” McElroy said. “And Florida State has decided to keep Mike Norvell. It’s been really wild to see what has happened here these last few seasons. Last year was unthinkable at 2-10. No one in a million years could have anticipated that roster, that personnel, winning just two games in the regular season.

“Even more unthinkable was to see how they played in the first three weeks of the season and getting off to a 3-0 start and being a top 10 team in the country — unanimous top-10 team in the country with how they performed — losing a close one to a really good Virginia team on the road, and then to see the bottom fall out. That’s a hard thing to wrap your head around.”

Mike Norvell will need to figure it out if he hopes to survive long-term. The sheer size of his buyout will afford him some cover, but Florida State fans won’t tolerate losing records much longer.

Still, for now the move was to hold firm. It’s simply too expensive to do anything else, McElroy said.

“You can’t just cut a $65 million check to fire the guy,” he said. “So I think Mike Norvell is still a good coach. He’s won a lot of games. But they do need to take a good, hard look at their processes with putting together a roster that won’t implode with the first sign of adversity, because that’s what happened in 2024, that’s what happened in 2025. Finding a mentally tough team that can weather the storm I think will be beneficial down the road.”