Florida State has fired Mike Norvell, and the athletics department, in the middle of a rebuild after a shocking fall from grace following an undefeated regular season three years ago, has begun searching for a new head coach. Plenty of candidates will be interested in taking over one of the ACC's crown jewels, but who? Money will be a question.
So will the attractiveness of the situation inside the athletic department. The school fired athletic director Mike Alford in September, and it doesn't yet have a permanent boss. But everyone knows you can win big in Tallahassee.
Norvell won 19 straight games across 2022 and 2023, went 13-0 in the 2023 regular season and was the first undefeated Power Five champion left out of the College Football Playoff. Florida State went 10-23 in the 33 games that followed, including 4-17 in the ACC since the start of 2024. They've lost 12 straight road games, tied for the longest streak in school history.
The wholesale changes coming at FSU won't be cheap. The program has also spent a lot of money over the last several years and is deep in debt after building and renovating football facilities. Buyouts for Norvell and assistant coaches could eclipse $65 million.
Norvell is owed $47.1 million to $50.3 million, either of which would rank as the third-largest buyout in college football history, but that could be offset by the salary Norvell earns at his next job. Then there is the cost of hiring a new head coach and staff. FSU closed fiscal year 2025 with $437 million in athletics-related debt, up from $237 million a year earlier.
Most of the debt is tied to bonds for the renovation of Doak Campbell Stadium and a new football operations building. All of that will factor into who Florida State hires next to take over a program that seems lost in the mix of an evolving ACC, where Miami has emerged as the superpower over the last two years as NIL spending increased. CBS Sports spoke with industry sources and compiled a list of seven candidates who make sense for the Seminoles.
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