Hot seat Mike Norvell talks like a coach on his way to a Florida State firing

Jordan Travis broke his leg, and the College Football Playoff committee shattered Florida State’s spirit.

In the two years since, Mike Norvell never could reassemble the pieces, and now he’s the spitting image of a guy exhibiting Broken Coach Syndrome.

As the Seminoles flop toward the finish line of another wasted season, Norvell sounds like even he knows he’s out of answers.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” he said after his team’s 21-11 loss to NC State, its sixth loss of the season in a game that illuminated the ACC’s ugly underbelly.

“I can’t answer the question of how or why, but, hell yeah, it’s frustrating,” he added.

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It’s never a good sign when a coach admits he doesn’t know how or why his team keeps failing. That’s a telltale symptom of Broken Coach Syndrome.

“We’re not even close to living up to expectations,” Norvell said.

Florida State would owe Norvell more than $58 million if it fires him after this season. That figure would be the second-largest buyout in college football history, topping Brian Kelly’s buyout for the silver medal behind Jimbo Fisher’s Texas A&M buyout.

Norvell’s buyout could be spread out in monthly installments through 2031, and his contract includes a duty to mitigate the buyout damages. That means his future employment would reduce the buyout, and, at age 44, this won’t be the final stop on his tour, not for a coach who went 13-1 two years ago and garnered interest from Alabama after Nick Saban’s retirement.

Norvell’s past 24 months illustrate how quickly a coach can freefall from the penthouse to the outhouse. His roster bailed after the CFP committee shipped it into the Orange Bowl instead of the final four-team playoff bracket. Georgia clubbed the Seminoles 63-3. Norvell and his program never recovered.

If there’s any case for retaining Norvell, it’s wrapped up in a recruiting class that, if it holds, would amount to one of the best of his tenure. The class ranks 14th nationally in the 247Sports Composite, but that ranking trails rivals Miami and Florida.

FSU would face difficulty selling recruiting momentum to a fan base hungry for the firing of a coach who’s 7-17 since the committee embraced Alabama and spurned the Seminoles in 2023.

The better reasoning to hold off on firing the buyout cannon is that Florida State would be joining a coaching carousel that’s blown past the fire department’s listed capacity. The Seminoles would be playing catchup in a hiring market where they’d pitch a position that, at best, would be about the fourth-best job available.

Of course, that’s a tough narrative to sell to your fans, too: Sorry, folks, but we’re keeping our underwater coach, because if we fire him, we’re afraid we lack the juice to compete for top replacements. Now, who wants to renew their season tickets?

It might not be so bad if Florida State could sell Norvell is fast at work improving the situation, but nobody who’s watched the Seminoles lose six of their past eight games would believe that.

Norvell is talking like he just finished reading that self-help book Lane Kiffin keeps tweeting about. He’s got faith in the journey.

“There will be a lesson to be told and a story to be told throughout this,” said Norvell, as he attempted a bad impersonation of a sage, “and I do have faith that it does happen for a reason, but it is frustrating to have to go through it all.”

There’s a reason for this, all right. The reason being Norvell’s team persistently performs poorly.

That season-opening upset of Alabama became a mirage. The more lasting image of this journey will be NC State’s punt landing on the helmet of a Seminole, ricocheting backward 25 yards and being recovered by the Wolfpack punter at the line of scrimmage, late in the fourth quarter. A minute and a half later, the Seminoles muffed another punt.

I’m afraid the Broken Coach Syndrome is spreading. If it’s not stopped soon, this will become a full-blown case of Broken Program Syndrome.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: At FSU, hot seat Mike Norvell talks like a coach on way to a firing

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