Florida State Football: Mike Norvell era is coming to an end

The Florida State Seminoles haven’t been good in years, and head coach Mike Norvell is apparently not the guy to change that.

While historically strong, the Florida State Seminoles have been one of college football’s punching bags over the past several years, having not seen a winning season since 2017–a drought that is seemingly not going to come to an end under head coach Mike Norvell.

Now Norvell has only had one full season with Florida State football, as his 2020 run–along with everyone else’s–was severely stunted by the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

But while that may provide him with some wiggle room, he has nonetheless had a couple of years to build something at the program and has shown no progress whatsoever.

During the short-lived days of Willie Taggart (a man that Florida State football fans couldn’t wait to see disappear), the floor was 5-7. That now seems to be the ceiling, though, as Norvell only has eight wins with the ‘Noles in total. So especially by the community’s standards, it doesn’t matter if he’s been there for two minutes or two decades, there has to be some level of improvement–and soon.

A fair portion of FSU diehards have already given Norvell a touch of the Taggart treatment, saying that he needs to take a hike. However, those individuals fail to understand just how ruined their beloved program is, along with how much time it could take to repair it to their unreasonably-high expectations.

But while the extremists may be ignorant, that does not necessarily mean that their voices aren’t heard. We witnessed how powerful the impatience of fans can be when Taggart was scrapped as early as he was (combined with blatant desperation on the university’s part).

Sure, Taggart was probably never going to take the Seminoles to the heights that supporters had initially hoped for, but even if he did have the capabilities to do so, the “chance” that he was given was a fraction of what it should have been. Most great coaches can’t turn a struggling program around overnight, yet Taggart was supposed to? Come on.

Today, Norvell is in a situation very similar to the one that Taggart was in back during Florida State’s 2019 stretch: a coach with a promising résumé from a small school has suffered early at a big one, and the masses are growing irritable as a result.

Said masses are growing so irritable, in fact, that if Mike Norvell fails to obtain a record in 2022 that is convincingly superior to the pair that he has under his belt so far, then Florida State football will most likely feel pressured to pursue other options for who should be at the helm of its football team. The bad news comes when considering that 2022 will probably not treat the ‘Noles much better than 2021 did.

Looking at what awaits the Seminoles this Fall, there are several opponents that are clearly better than them today. Such opponents include LSU, Louisville, Wake Forest, North Carolina State, Clemson, Miami, and Florida in that order.

Assuming that FSU succumbs to all seven of those foes (which is quite possible), the program will miss the postseason–and burn up an entire year of what is supposed to be a rebuild–once again. There is no way that Norvell comes out of a stretch that rough with his future in Tallahassee secure.

Currently, there isn’t a single thing that concretely predicts Mike Norvell being fired after an unpleasant 2022 showing. However, knowing the frantic nature of Florida State and its fans as of late, he better hope that I’m mistaken on how I see this season working out for his Seminoles.