Mike Bianchi: AD Michael Alford gave FSU fans what they wanted with Mike Norvell — and now he’s fired because of it

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ORLANDO, Fla. — Michael Alford committed one of the cardinal sins of being a big-time college athletic director.

He gave the fans exactly what they wanted, and now he’s unemployed because of it.

Florida State fired Alford on Monday, less than three years after Seminole Nation was practically begging him to do the very thing that ultimately helped cost him his job: Back up the Brinks truck and make sure football coach Mike Norvell didn’t leave Tallahassee for Tuscaloosa.

Remember January 2024? Norvell had just led Florida State to a 13-0 record and an ACC championship and — before the College Football Playoff committee committed grand larceny by leaving the undefeated Seminoles out of the playoff — had restored FSU to national prominence.

Then Nick Saban retired at Alabama. Norvell’s name immediately surfaced as the leading candidate, and Seminole Nation collectively screamed: PAY THE MAN!

So Alford did. He gave Norvell an eight-year deal worth more than $10 million annually to make sure Alabama couldn’t steal him away. At the time, Seminole fans celebrated. On Monday, ironically, as the Seminoles prepare to play Alabama on Saturday, Alford got fired. (Question: Wouldn’t it have made much more sense if Alford’s dismissal had come during last week’s bye week instead of becoming a major distraction five days before FSU takes on the 10th-ranked Crimson Tide?)

At any rate, this all makes a conversation I had with Alford last month seem almost cruelly prophetic. I asked him what Norvell needed to do this season to save his job.

“I’m not going to put any hypothetical benchmarks,” Alford told me, “… but I’ll know when I see it.”

Turns out Alford won’t be around to see it. Instead, he’ll be watching from the outside, which brings to mind the immortal words of former Alabama coach Gene Stallings: “If you start listening to the fans in the stands, you end up sitting with them.”

Not that Alford needed Seminole fans to convince him to spend money. Wasteful spending has become embedded in the DNA of the modern college athletic director. If most of us spent money the way college ADs spend money, we’d be living in cardboard boxes and eating ramen noodles every night.

The financial lunacy in college athletics has become laughable. Athletic directors constantly complain about the escalating cost of paying players while simultaneously handing coaches absurd, long-term, virtually guaranteed contracts. And nobody exploits this insanity better than super-agent Jimmy Sexton, who plays athletic directors like a Stradivarius and routinely convinces them to spend money like a trust-fund teenager with Daddy’s black AmEx.

Norvell is Exhibit A.

He already had a lucrative contract when Alabama came calling. But because FSU feared losing the hottest coach in America, the Seminoles gave him another raise and extension. The coach got the money. The school got the risk.

And now Norvell has essentially gotten Alford fired. Norvell may be next — except the Seminoles still can’t really afford to fire him. Even if they do, it’s clear they want a new AD to make the next coaching hire.

Gators legend Steve Spurrier, with his usual gift for cutting through the nonsense, summed up the difference between Florida and Florida State recently on a podcast with Pat Dooley.

“FSU’s got some issues,” Spurrier said. “They’ve got a coach they can’t get rid of because they don’t have the money to let him go. Fortunately, we had enough money to pay our guy off.”

Ouch.

Florida paid Billy Napier roughly $21 million to go away after last season. Florida State would have owed Norvell about $55 million if it had fired him then. Even if FSU waits until after this season, the tab would still be about $46 million.

Think about that: $46 million. Not to coach. Not to recruit. Not to acquire players. Not to win football games. Forty-six million dollars simply to make your football coach disappear.

This is what happens when athletic departments negotiate contracts as if the good times will never end. After going 13-0 in 2023, Florida State has gone 8-18. The Seminoles lost at home to then-No. 19 SMU on Labor Day night as many fans streamed toward the exits chanting, “Fire Norvell.”

Fire Norvell? They just fired the guy who gave Norvell the contract. And here’s the truly frightening part for FSU: The Norvell buyout is only part of the financial problem.

Florida State had a staggering $437 million in athletic-related debt for the 2025 fiscal year — reportedly the highest total in the country — after embarking on an infrastructure arms race that included hundreds of millions of dollars in facility improvements. Since Alford became AD, Florida State invested more than $500 million in a new football facility, improvements to Doak Campbell Stadium and other projects.

Yes, some of those investments were necessary to compete with the SEC and Big Ten powers the Seminoles so desperately want to emulate.

But it raises an uncomfortable question: In this new era of college football, is taking on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt for concrete, luxury suites and premium seating really the smartest strategy, when an increasingly enormous amount of money must also be poured into players and coaches?

College football’s economic model changed almost overnight. The stadium arms race didn’t disappear, but it suddenly had competition from the roster arms race.

And here’s the problem with fancy luxury seats: Somebody has to want to sit in them.

If you’re going to make that sort of investment in your stadium, your football coach better win. Otherwise those expensive seats become beautiful monuments to fiscal overconfidence.

Florida should pay attention, too. The Gators are preparing for their own staggering $1.45 billion renovation of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. They better hope new coach Jon Sumrall wins big, because the only thing worse than an outdated stadium is a billion-dollar renovated stadium filled with empty seats.

This is the economic lunacy of modern college football. Schools need more money than ever to pay players, retain players, recruit players, hire coaches and fire coaches. Yet athletic departments keep handing coaches contracts that essentially guarantee generational wealth regardless of whether they succeed or fail.

Michael Alford certainly made mistakes at Florida State. You don’t accumulate enormous debt, preside over a football collapse and escape accountability. And there were apparently concerns inside FSU that Alford and Norvell underestimated just how dramatically football spending would escalate after that magical 2023 season.

But let’s remember something: When Alford gave Norvell that contract, almost everybody thought he was doing the right thing.

FSU fans wanted Norvell locked in. Boosters wanted him locked in. The administration wanted him locked in. Alabama wanted a coach, Jimmy Sexton had leverage and Florida State panicked.

And if Alford had refused to give Norvell the raise and Norvell had actually bolted for Alabama? Seminole fans would have wanted Alford fired for that.

That’s the wonderful thing about being an athletic director. You can be wrong even when you’re right. And you can eventually get fired for making the decision everybody once demanded you make.

Three years ago, Florida State fans were terrified Mike Norvell might leave. Today, Florida State fans are even more terrified he won’t leave.

That contract, once celebrated as a commitment to championship football, has become a financial albatross hanging around the neck of an athletic department already drowning in debt.

And Michael Alford? Just last month, he told me he would know whether or not Mike Norvell had done enough to save his job.

Now somebody else will make that decision.

Because in the ultimate irony, the athletic director who once paid nearly $100 million to keep Mike Norvell at Florida State is gone.

And Mike Norvell is still there — mostly because Florida State really can’t afford for him not to be.

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