Mike Norvell hot seat: Why Florida State's lack of sustainability will undo Seminoles HC

Things are falling apart quickly for Mike Norvell at Florida State. With the Seminoles coming off of a loss to Stanford on Saturday, his seat is getting hotter and hotter.

Florida State has now lost four straight games and is still in search of its first ACC win. In fact, the Seminoles have lost nine consecutive conference games dating back to last season, where they went 2-10.

The talk is getting real, with On3’s Pete Nakos reporting Sunday that FSU decision makers met to discuss Norvell’s future with the program. College football analyst Josh Pate discussed it further on Josh Pate’s College Football Show on Sunday evening, saying it will likely come down to the money.

“You don’t need to debate whether this performance is fireable,” Pate said. “Of course it is. Of course it’s not good enough. But that’s why buyouts exist. Buyouts are baked into contract, No. 1, to fleece athletic directors and, No. 2, to make sure there are no knee-jerk emotional decisions that are made because those decisions cost a lot of money.

“Well, here we are. We’ve got a decision that would cost a whole lot of money. In fact, $54 million looks to be the buyout. When you add it all up, the cost that it takes to get rid of an entire staff, to hire a new staff, FSU’s having to make about a 100-million-dollar-decision here. Do they want to make that decision? Can they afford to make that decision?”

It’s astonishing how bad it has gotten in such a short amount of time for Florida State under Norvell. In the 2023 season, the Seminoles went undefeated in the regular season and won the ACC Championship. They didn’t make the College Football Playoff, however, after a season-ending injury to starting quarterback Jordan Travis.

It’s been all downhill since. After last season’s disappointing display, Norvell attacked the transfer portal heavily to bring in 23 new players. It’s clear that strategy hasn’t led to much better results.

Pate believes that Norvell spent too much time in the portal at the expense of developing incoming freshmen, and called into question the sustainability of that approach. With the future not looking much better, the writing may already be on the wall.

“I have no idea what the future is here because it’s not built on anything,” Pate said. “Yet again, I have to preface this with we went down there this spring, we had Mike on the show and I said last week and I will say again this week, I think they exhausted every option that they could exhaust. He made new hires. I think they pressed 37 different buttons after last year and I fully believe to this moment that he was adamant when he said, ‘I believe we made the right moves.’ …I don’t know that Mike was able to press enough buttons to change last year in one year.

“The problem here is, what’s the future built on? Let’s say I retain Mike Norvell. What am I giving him another year to do? I know my donors aren’t gonna invest in NIL because they already have and this is what we got. We don’t have a future built on in-house recruiting. We’ve got a future built on the portal. We’re just gonna portal every year. So there’s really no sustainable model here and I have the one result in 2023. It looks to clearly be the outlier.”

Overall in his tenure at Florida State, Mike Norvell has a 36-31 record. The Seminoles have a bye coming up this week and a big decision to make before taking on Wake Forest in Week 10. Pate believes Norvell could be gone before that game happens, but regardless, it’s happening.

“Either they’re gonna back him and they’re gonna get behind him or they’re gonna let him go,” he said. “They’ve got a bye week this upcoming week. My guess is they’re gonna let him go. My guess is Mike Norvell’s gonna be done at Florida State. Think about what we’re in the middle of. They’re not done losing games, obviously. So if it’s not this week it’ll be eventually.”