OK, let me get this straight. The university that cried poor over the past two years, that threw a public and legal tantrum about the ACC’s revenue sharing system creating an unsustainable financial deficit for its sports programs, is on the verge of giving its football coach nearly $60 million dollars to not coach.
The university that just finished a $265 million renovation to its football stadium, and just this week opened its $138 million, 150,000 square-foot standalone football facility, is close to firing a coach it extended in January of 2024 for 10 years and more than $80 million.
What in blue blazes is going on at Florida State?
I may be in the minority here, but maybe those in charge — not suddenly failing football coach Mike Norvell — should be on the hook for this financial mess. Maybe the ugly truth behind the rise and fall of Norvell isn’t all about the football team, but as much about bumbling tactical mistakes from the university.
Let me introduce the Law of Holes to FSU president Richard McCullough: when you find yourself in one, stop digging.
This isn’t that difficult to figure out, and it goes all the way back to two summers ago, when FSU first floated the idea of leaving the ACC because it was losing money and at a competitive disadvantage with other schools in the football-mad south.
Either the threat to leave the ACC was an elaborate ruse that allowed FSU to — as they say in hardscrabble Tallahassee politics — “trick-@#%!” its way through more than a year of legal filings, knowing full-well it was never leaving but used it as leverage, anyway (and the ACC bit, of course). Or the university has magically found a handful of boosters who decided 60 large isn’t to steep a price to fire a coach.
Either way, it all makes absolutely zero sense.
Or maybe — stay with me here — FSU just loves being part of the action. You know, the whiff of the game at hand.
Sitting at the big boy table, yucking it up and puffing out its chest and making clear, beyond all doubt, it deserves a spot right alongside the SEC and Big Ten. And to prove it, sonofagun if we’re not going to spend more than $483 million to make us look like everybody else at that table.
Then fire a coach, pay him $60 million to walk and blame lost revenue on him. After blaming it on the ACC.
But don’t feel sorry for Norvell, who “trick-@#%!” his way in 2023 to an unbeaten regular season, and used superstar sports agent Jimmy Sexton to leverage it into a monster pay raise because Alabama may or may not have had interest in a coach who — prior to 2023 — had won 18 games in three seasons in Tallahassee.
Again, I may be in the minority, but I can’t see uber-sharp Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne selling Norvell as the guy to follow the greatest coach in the history of the planet.
But Norvell used a hot quarterback in 2023, a group of key additions from the transfer portal, and played a favorable ACC schedule (why is the ACC always the common denominator here?) to go 13-0. And if we’re being completely honest, could’ve won it all with healthy quarterback Jordan Travis.
But here’s the key to this entire financial cluster truck: Saban didn’t tell Alabama he was leaving until Jan. 10, 2024 — nine days after FSU brass got a clear look at the future under Norvell.
Because it was nine days earlier that FSU played in the Orange Bowl against two-time defending national champion Georgia, and lost by 60. I’m not making that up, the Noles – playing without Travis and a group of star players opting out of the game to prepare for the NFL draft — were humiliated in an eight-possession loss.
It was then that McCullough and FSU athletic director Mike Alford should’ve seen what they had in Norvell and his philosophy of roster building, or more important, the immediate future of the team. Because the FSU team that got its doors blown off in the Orange Bowl was the foundation of the team — with more crapshoot additions from the portal (this time, failed additions) — that won two games in 2024.
The same FSU program that had decided under Norvell to ignore building organically by developing elite high school players, and instead chose to roll the dice on the great unloved and unpaid of the portal.
FSU brass then threw a 10-year extension at Norvell and banked on his ability to find anywhere from 15-25 impact players annually from a transfer portal that has two types of players: those other schools don’t want, or those looking for a quick payday.
Now FSU has lost its past nine ACC games and 11 of 12, and last week lost to a gutted Stanford team that fired its coach during the summer and is using an old NFL coach as a stop gap — all after losing its elite players to the transfer portal when its head coach was originally fired.
So now (now!) FSU decides to roll out the ol’ vote of confidence for Norvell, in which Alford’s statement this week reads more like a hostage note than support for an embattled coach. If the Big Ten and SEC are firing coaches with fat buyouts, then bygawd, so can FSU.
They’ll circle back at the end of the season, Alford said, and assess football like all of their sports programs.
Wait, this reckless fiscal ride gets much better.
After spending more than $483 million on two football facilities, FSU may spend another $70 million to make Norvell and his staff not coach in Tallahassee, then spend another $70 million for a new, elite-level coach and his staff to replace the mistake they made with Norvell.
That’s more than $625 million spent on football, or significantly more than what the university could’ve paid the ACC two summers ago to leave the conference if it had an invite to the Big Ten or SEC ― which it never did.
Maybe it’s time for a new Law of Holes.
When you find yourself in a money pit, stop trying to trick-@#%! your way out of it.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
