Misery Index: It's looking bleak for Mike Norvell at Florida State 2 years after miracle run
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When you’ve backed yourself into a corner the way Mike Norvell has at Florida State with underwhelming recruiting classes, an over-reliance on the transfer portal and an unfathomable losing streak in ACC games, there’s no more margin for error.
And yet error came, nonetheless.
Now it’s going to be another nervous Sunday after Florida State’s 24-10 loss to Clemson. Is another coach at a high-profile program on his way out the door?
It’s probably just a matter of time — maybe weeks, but maybe just hours. That’s the position Norvell put himself in by losing nine ACC games in a row, getting off the schneid last week against Wake Forest, then face-planting against a Clemson team that has been almost equally disappointing this year.
Here’s a stark framing of the situation in Tallahassee: In the last 12 months, UConn coach Jim Mora has more wins over ACC opponents (North Carolina, Boston College, Duke) than the Florida State coach.
It’s unacceptable and embarrassing. And regardless of what Norvell accomplished in his last job at Memphis or the 2023 season when Florida State was 13-0 and got snubbed by the College Football Playoff, you simply cannot excuse that reality no matter what you think of his chops as a football coach.
And make no mistake — Norvell was highly regarded by pretty much everyone, enough that he probably could have been the Alabama coach after Nick Saban if he wanted to be.
That’s all water under the bridge now, though. Florida State offered Norvell a golden contract, convincing him to pull out of the Alabama search, and as a result this is going to be an expensive separation to the tune of $55 million should the Seminoles pull the trigger.
Florida State may not be as good of a job as its fans think, and its administration may be more chaotic and incompetent than most realize, but there is no universe in which the on-field product should sink to these depths.
Norvell has nobody to blame for that than himself, and until it has another coach in place it can believe in, the Seminoles will reign as America’s most miserable fan base in Week 11.
Conference Champions of Misery
Big Ten: Though Washington’s 13-10 loss at Wisconsin wasn’t the season’s biggest upset by point spread — the Badgers were only 10.5-point underdogs — it’s certainly in the conversation for the season’s most embarrassing performance. Not only was Wisconsin previously winless in the Big Ten, it had lost its first five conference games by an average of 23.2 points and hadn’t scored more than 10 points in any of them. Meanwhile, Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh enraged his fan base this past week by announcing Luke Fickell will be back for a fourth season even though his tenure has gone horribly. With all that swirling, Washington had no excuse to lose a game where Wisconsin only managed 205 yards of offense and whose leading passer was punter Sean West, who got 24 yards on a fake. But with the Huskies going minus-2 in turnover margin and committing eight penalties, it happened — and now they’re out of the playoff mix at 6-3.
Big 12: Of all the stupid, meaningless beefs that make college football what it is, none is funnier than the rivalry between Houston and UCF over which school has more of a claim to NASA. Since 2017, UCF has designated an annual “Space Game,” where it wears special uniforms to commemorate its historic connections and partnerships with Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. But as former Houston coach Dana Holgersen once famously quipped, “They don’t say, ‘Orlando, we have a problem.’” We’ll let others figure out who’s right, but on the football field there’s no debate about which program already launched into orbit. Houston has been one of the nation’s best stories at 8-2, while Scott Frost’s homecoming has underwhelmed so far. And not only did UCF blow a 10-point lead to lose 30-27, it’s the first time the Knights have lost a Space Game. Which makes this year a black hole.
SEC: Between 1987 and 2017, Florida didn’t lose to Kentucky. No matter how good Kentucky thought it was or how mediocre Florida might be in a given year, this was a bug vs. windshield rivalry. And after 31 straight wins, there was little reason to believe the Wildcats would suddenly flip the script. But in the last eight meetings, Kentucky is 5-3 including this year’s 38-7 Wildcat victory. It’s the rare result that isn’t great for either fan base. Kentucky fans are largely tired of Mark Stoops, but he’s not a hot enough candidate to abandon his $9 million per year contract. And while Florida is in the midst of a coaching search to replace Billy Napier, losing to Kentucky is historically a red line. Florida didn’t just lose in Lexington, it turned the ball over four times in the first half, benched starting quarterback D.J. Lagway, couldn’t get anything done offensively and logged one of the season’s most embarrassing results. Kentucky hasn’t lost to Florida by such a margin since 40-6 in 1950.
Group of Five: Memphis is a basketball school that wants to be a football school, and if a Tigers fan went into a coma around 2011, they’d be ecstatic to wake up and learn that their favorite program is headed to a 12th straight bowl game. But when you sustain success over this long, expectations change. Memphis has invested enough, both in the roster and facilities, to believe it should win an American Conference title and reach the College Football Playoff. But that’s not going to happen this year, not after a 38-32 loss at home to Tulane. For the 8-2 Tigers, the real damage was done on Oct. 18 when they lost a stunner to UAB, but this result twisted the knife. Head coach Ryan Silverfield is now in a very strange spot where he’s 29-7 over the last three years but may need to get out while he can because the locals are getting restless.
Headset Misery
Andy Kotelnicki: Everyone at Penn State is planning their next move in the wake of James Franklin’s firing, which makes it all the more ridiculous that the remaining coaching staff isn’t letting it all hang out. What do you have to lose? And yet, after a stunning rally to take a 24-20 lead over No. 2 Indiana, with 6:27 to go, the Penn State offensive staff led by Kotelnicki completely turtled up. In fact, on its final drive when another first down would have basically put the game out of reach, Penn State was so conservative that it brought out seven offensive linemen for third-and-9 and ran the safest and least threatening screen pass anyone’s ever seen. It was almost as if Penn State was perfectly fine giving Fernando Mendoza one more chance to win the game — and he did, with a 10-play, 80 yard drive that will live for decades in Indiana lore. Penn State’s 27-24 loss was also a reminder this is still a really talented team that wasted its opportunity to do something special.
Bill O’Brien: If nothing else comes from this season, the phrase “What’s up, Trevor?” is now etched in Boston College lore. At his weekly news conference, O’Brien did not like it one bit when broadcaster (and BC grad) Mike Gualtieri asked about his message to fans amidst a really rough season in Chestnut Hill. O’Brien went off on Gualtieri for coming to press conferences “with these down questions … You can go out there in your dark-clouded world or whatever it is and do what you want to do. We’re not down. The sun is up and we’re fighting. That’s my message to the fans.” And then, just as O’Brien’s anger reached full froth, he turned his head to another reporter and abruptly said, “What’s up, Trevor?” We found out what was up a few days later — a 45-13 loss to SMU, dropping BC to 1-9.
Jeff Traylor: The UTSA coach talks a lot about the NIL disparity his program faces against the top of the American Conference. It seems his peers think he talks about it too much — and they’ve had enough. In the summer of 2024, Traylor said UTSA was “getting our teeth kicked in by Memphis and South Florida,” and later said the Tigers had “six times more” to spend on their roster. Memphis coach Ryan Silverfield responded by pointing to Traylor’s 10-year, $28 million contract and suggested he should “probably give some of that money back to the school.” Then, after South Florida beat UTSA 55-23, Alex Golesh took his whack saying, “When you start talking about other people’s roster to benefit yourself, you tread water that implies there’s not an elite level of work here.” To be fair, there is a disparity. Memphis, South Florida and Tulane spend more. But you can understand why Traylor talking about it, even if the intent is to motivate his own fan base, rubs people the wrong way.
Lincoln Riley: We are deep in speculation season, and after USC’s 38-17 win over Northwestern, Riley was asked to address a comment by podcaster/host Josh Pate where he suggested fans should “keep an eye” on the Trojans’ coach. It makes some sense. Riley famously pulled a stunner four years ago, leaving Oklahoma for Los Angeles, and nobody would argue it’s lived up to expectations. He frequently makes passive-aggressive comments about the hardships of travel in the Big Ten. There’s also chatter in the industry that Riley and athletic director Jen Cohen, who did not hire him, don’t always operate on the same wavelength. In response, Riley told reporters, “You guys know what I sacrificed to be here. I’m where I need to be.” Interesting choice there to use “need” rather than “want,” wouldn’t you say?
Moments of Misery
The ACC took a big reputation hit: At this point, no human with a functioning brain can be gaslit into believing the ACC is a good football league. The results are the results, and the ACC is the fourth-best power conference this season with a significant gap to the Big 12 at No. 3. But there was a path for the ACC to possibly fool some people if a few results went the right way down the stretch. Unfortunately for the ACC, the truth came to light this week as No. 14 Virginia lost 16-9 at home to Wake Forest, Duke lost 37-34 to UConn and Louisville lost 29-26 at home to Cal in overtime. It means the ACC will probably be a one-bid league this year barring a weird scenario. Commissioner Jim Phillips better hope Georgia Tech can beat Georgia, or else everyone will know that the ACC’s only CFP contender will be the winner of its championship game.
Auburn got rid of Diego Pavia for good: If you told an Auburn fan at the start of the 2023 season they’d lose to Pavia three times, their first response would probably be, “Who?” And if you then told them Pavia would play at least some role in Hugh Freeze being fired after just 34 games, they’d have likely advised you to seek professional help. But there’s little doubt Pavia’s win at Auburn as New Mexico State’s quarterback two years ago set a toxic tone for the Freeze regime. So it was fitting that in Auburn’s first game post-Freeze, Pavia tortured them yet again for 377 passing yards, 112 rushing and four total touchdowns in Vanderbilt’s 45-38 overtime victory. The only good news for Auburn is that Pavia’s out of eligibility after this year.
Dan Lanning’s clock management nearly blew up: It all worked out for Oregon in the end, winning 18-16 at Iowa on a 39-yard field goal. But what in the world was going on inside Lanning’s headset on the Ducks’ final drive? After getting the ball back with 1:51 left, Oregon was so deliberate offensively — despite having all three timeouts — that they didn’t get across the 50 until Dante Moore delivered a 24-yard sideline laser with 23 seconds left. At that point, Oregon had taken so long to get there (while using no timeouts) that it didn’t really have an option to play for a touchdown. Sure, you only need a field goal, but leaving things up to a kicker in bad weather was a big, unnecessary risk. Good result for Oregon, bad process by Lanning.
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