The Seminoles' stunning loss at Virginia makes a win over Miami even more crucial. Will this season spiral like last year? Or has FSU's investment in its program and the new faces around it changed how they'll respond?
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Within the visiting team tunnel at Scott Stadium, Mike Norvell, deep in thought as he watches his Florida State football players in warmups, acknowledges a doubt.
In this game against Virginia, will this team respond to adversity when it arises? Because it surely will.
After all, Norvell isn’t oblivious to the facts. This matchup has all the hallmarks of an upset: a historical cellar-dweller in the conference; a week before a rivalry showdown against top-five Miami; on the road, at night and on a Friday to boot.
“How will we handle adversity?” he asked again.
Turns out, the Seminoles managed certain aspects of adversity quite well. They overcame a 14-0 deficit by scoring three consecutive touchdowns and answered back-to-back scores in the second half, too — the last one a fourth-and-11 conversion to send the game into overtime.
But, in the end, they lost 46-38, leaving Norvell with that same question as No. 18 Florida State now prepares to host No. 4 Miami on Saturday at Doak Campbell Stadium.
How will we handle adversity?
“We have an opportunity in front of us. A huge game for us, our program and university,” Norvell said. “I believe in how this team works. I believe in what they’ll do.”
This Saturday’s game — the renewal of an in-state rivalry, kicking off in prime time on national television, in front of a sold out crowd — seems more important than even the stakes would suggest.
This is a critical game in a pivotal season for Florida State football. The unexpected loss to Virginia — a touchdown underdog — makes it all the more urgent.
At many universities — Florida State more prominent among them — the pressure to win in major college football is on the verge of crippling. The financial stress points — directly compensating athletes to the tune of eight-figure team totals — is exacerbating an already pressurized and competitive environment.
Winning, once a preference, is now a necessity for athletic departments to maintain their revenue streams, such as donations, ticket sales and sponsorships.
No place is in more of a win-now mode than Florida State.
No school has invested so much in the recent past.
Take for instance that two overlapping facilities projects — stadium renovations and a new football-only building — are approaching a $400 million tab.
This offseason, after a two-win season in 2024, the roster and coaching staff was overhauled, most notably the firing and hiring of two new coordinators and the acquisition of 23 transfers, including the team’s starting quarterback, leading receiver, leading rusher and four offensive line starters — all at a cost of near $40 million in new coaching contracts and buyouts, front-loaded NIL cash for players and revenue-share distribution tethered to the NCAA’s landmark settlement of the House case.
It was costly enough that Norvell himself reduced his salary by $4.5 million.
That doesn’t include millions in fees from Florida State’s lawsuit against the ACC.
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In all, the financial tab creeps toward a half-billion dollars.
“My job is to provide the resources to be successful,” said Florida State athletic director Michael Alford, an industry veteran who worked at Oklahoma, Alabama and the Dallas Cowboys as an adept fundraiser and development whiz.
“Coming out of the House settlement, everybody else stopped building facilities,” he continued. “I went ‘Hell no, guys. We’ve got to go pedal to the metal!’ When you have a depression, you gain market share. You double down.”
Money matters
Across the country, universities and state governments are increasing their financial investments in athletic departments with one goal in mind: Win.
Georgia Tech, South Carolina, West Virginia, Clemson and many more either increased student fees or created them to generate millions in new revenue for athletics. In Connecticut, the state approved a tax credit of 50% on donations to UConn athletics of up to $500,000 per individual.
North Carolina and Louisiana officials, meanwhile, have proposed a tax on sports betting to assist their public university athletic departments. And, in perhaps the most extreme example, Arizona State altered its entire university model by embedding the athletic department into the school’s financial structure and subsidizing it last year to the tune of more than $50 million.
Florida State and the other 11 FBS schools in Florida received a financial jolt of their own.
In a policy change spearheaded by lobbying efforts from Alford and FSU officials, the Florida Board of Governors approved an amendment this summer to permit its public universities to use up to $22.5 million annually in auxiliary funds for athletics. The funds, previously off limits to athletic departments, are generated from university bookstores, parking fees and housing.
The gist: Universities are reallocating institutional and public funds to college athletes — not a unique practice at lower-resourced Division I programs (many of them are heavily subsidized by their schools) but a mostly new phenomenon within the ACC, SEC, Big Ten and Big 12.
“In some way, shape or form, students are paying the cost for this,” a power conference athletic director said.
NCAA president Charlie Baker says this concept “is not at all troublesome” considering that most Division I athletic departments receive substantial subsidies from their universities. “I think going forward this is part of what I mean when I talk about choices,” he said. “People are going to have to make choices.”
Is it worth it?
That’s a question Michael Cross, commissioner of the Southern Conference, believes each school should be asking itself. Most of his programs rely on subsidies.
“We’re all going to spend a lot more money for the same results. It’s a zero-sum game,” Cross said. “Athletics is an extension of a university’s marketing efforts and a way to attract students. But what’s the ROI on those marketing dollars?”
The financial investment from universities heightens the stakes on Saturdays in the fall.
At Florida State, that goes double considering the roller coaster of the last few years. Winners of three national championships and 14 conference titles in a 22-year stretch, the Seminoles endured four straight losing seasons from 2018-21. They won 13 games in 2023 only to miss the four-team playoff in one of the most controversial decisions in college football history, and then dropped to 2-10 last season in a stunning collapse, before their offseason overhaul resulted in a weight-lifting, season-opening victory over Alabama — the program that beat out the Noles for the final playoff spot two years ago.
And then, somewhat inexplicably, Norvell’s team found itself backpedaling in Charlottesville, its defense pushed around for nearly 500 yards and its offense committing three turnovers.
In the locker room, quarterback Tommy Castellanos, the team leader and transfer from Boston College, told players to “be a man about it.”
“Things like this happen and teams kind of fall apart, but we have a good brotherhood and we’ll stay together and keep fighting,” he said.
Last season’s team struggled in responding to adversity. Losses mounted. A six-game losing skid. A two-win year.
“Take it on the chin and it’s on to the next one!” Castellanos told players in the locker room.
The next one is the big one, perhaps the biggest one of the regular season.
Miami (4-0) enters with its own group of high-priced transfer players, including former Georgia quarterback Carson Beck, a rebuilt offensive line and NFL Draft prospects along the defensive front.
“The Virginia loss adds a greater sense of urgency and we can show the world Saturday that the Alabama game wasn’t a fluke,” said Jeremy Cloud, an FSU alum and practicing attorney in Atlanta who is a member of the school’s Bowden Society, an exclusive booster group with a required $50,000 donation over five years.
“People are playing the hypotheticals again [about Alabama], ‘Well if they played today!’ Well, we did play, a month ago, and we beat them on the field,” Cloud said.
The Alabama win culminated in the opening of one of the more luxury-themed stadium renovations (8,300 premium seats were added). The entire day — the win, the stadium, the celebration — ended “18 months of pure hell,” said Cloud, and provided a necessary victory to convince the fan base to “believe again.”
They believed enough to purchase most of the remaining unsold premium seats after the win, says Charlie Dudley, the chair of the board of directors of Seminole Boosters, a private non-profit organization with the sole purpose to fundraise for FSU athletics.
Seat-license sales on the new premium areas — 98% of them sold — will help finance bonds issued to fund the stadium. For instance, each of the eight founder’s suites sold for $4 million and that doesn’t include an additional annual charge.
The stadium-funding buckets include $90 million in one-time contributions for seat purchases, more than $65 million in one-time donations and an increase of $9-10 million in annual ticket costs.
Seminole Boosters president Stephen Ponder, Alford and staff spent three years meeting with 7,500 donors about the seating situation, choosing in-person meetings over a direct mail path to make things more personalized. Some of these were hard conversations. Those holding longtime seating assignments had the choice to pay more or move seats.
Some of them chose a third option: They didn’t buy tickets at all.
“There is a place for them. We are still talking with them,” Ponder said.
In its latest financial report last year, Seminole Boosters reported revenues of $108 million, including $75 million in contributions.
“College sports is big business,” said Dudley, an attorney and lobbyist. “Is there pressure? Yeah. Do we feel it? Sure. But this is where we want to be.”
How Florida State remade itself in the offseason
Three weeks before the dreadful season ended last year, Florida State officials began to discuss their impending staff and roster overhaul.
Alford and Norvell have a close relationship, meeting weekly. During a bye week last November, with the Noles a shocking 1-9, they prepared for the offseason. Coaches need to change. Players too.
Norvell fired three long-time assistants on his staff, decided to give play-calling duties — he had been calling the plays — to new coordinator Gus Malzahn and orchestrated a portal recruiting effort with general manager Darrick Yray.
But before all that, Yray says, FSU needed to know why last season happened. He points immediately to two positions: offensive line and quarterback. Norvell, one of the more outwardly honest and humble coaches in the sport, acknowledges a difficult truth: There were misevaluations.
“We took guys who were more projections,” he said.
It went beyond that, though. Faced with adversity as losses piled up last season, players didn’t care enough to fight back.
“You’ve got to have desire and fight,” Norvell says. “You have to embrace the challenges of what’s out there. It takes leaders within a team. It takes guys willing to be the example.”
Too few leaders last season?
Not enough projections panned out?
There were distractions too. One person close to the program recently quipped to a reporter, “a lot of the guys were more worried about N-I-L than F-S-U.”
FSU’s 2024 portal class ranked third in the country with 17 acquisitions. Nine of those players came from SEC programs, including five from Alabama. FSU coaches had previously recruited many of them out of high school before they chose to go to the SEC.
One recruiting expert contends that FSU’s staff relied too much on their high school evaluations of those players. Turns out, there were reasons why many of them sat the bench or were pushed out in the SEC.
“When we looked at metrics on why things didn’t work out … we saw character and the person,” Yray said.
It started with Castellanos, a Miami native, as it turns out, who was raised in Georgia and spent time at UCF before transferring to Boston College. He was one of the very first commitments out of the portal, plucked to replace struggling starter DJ Uiagalelei.
Castellanos moved to Tallahassee within two weeks of his commitment and began to help the program recruit others to join him in FSU’s offensive makeover, like receiver Duce Robinson from USC, offensive line starters from Ole Miss and Vanderbilt and running back Gavin Sawchuk from Oklahoma.
The three skill players account for 1,645 yards and 17 touchdowns.
But it wasn't just personnel that changed. In a way, philosophies did too.
Tony White, hired from Nebraska, brought his attacking 3-3-5 defense to replace the 4-3 FSU ran for years. Norvell’s move to drop play-calling along with the splashy hire of Malzahn provided him with more freedom to spend time in other areas. For instance, he’s never spent more time in individual player meetings than he has this year.
During the 2-10 year, Norvell didn’t question his philosophies. After all, he won 38 games in four years at Memphis and steadily built the Seminoles — three wins, to five, to 10, to 13 in 2023. He believes in his culture. There were no “revolutionary” changes, he says. Sure, they added some more competition-fueled offseason concepts like a tug-o-war. But this was about new faces, about finding leaders.
“The guys who returned on our team — there were very transparent conversations,” Norvell said. “There’s a competitive aspect of everything we focus on, trying to challenge guys — one on one, group on group. I wanted to see this offseason how guys would respond to losing.”
Now, after the failure in Charlottesville, he gets to see it firsthand Saturday.
Where does FSU fit in next wave of realignment?
This spring, Florida State officials needed to raise millions for the staffing and portal acquisitions, all the while construction costs for the two facilities lingered, and so did legal costs of suing the ACC. There’s more. The finalization of the NCAA’s House settlement and revenue-share payments to players would start the following fall.
It was a lot.
Plus, the Seminoles just had their worst season in 50 years.
“It’s hard to raise money when you’re not winning,” Cloud quipped.
Alford met with donors individually with a simple message: “We are going to make a philosophy change. Support us.”
Dudley, the board chair of Seminoles boosters, says the “secret sauce” to maneuvering through all of the financial stressors was alignment among the president (Richard McCullough), athletic director (Alford), booster president (Ponder) and school board chair (Peter Collins). The group formed a bond that persevered despite the two-win season.
“We doubled down,” Dudley said.
Norvell’s salary reduction spurred donors this spring at a key time, when school collectives hurriedly pushed millions of dollars to players before a new enforcement entity arrived on July 1 that is geared to prohibit many booster and collective contracts. The Battle’s End collective, one of the most lucrative in the country, paid out more than $7 million in front-loaded cash.
“We’d go on the road and ask donors to help and they’d say, ‘Why wouldn’t I? Look what coach is doing!’” Dudley said.
But the evolution of college athletics — from amateur to a more professional model — takes a mentality change that isn’t always easy for fans to accept, says Ponder. He learned that last year. FSU’s collective was believed to have paid out in excess of $10 million to the two-win roster last year.
“Fans will say, ‘If we’re paying them, we shouldn’t lose!’” Ponder said. “But the reality of that is there are other teams paying their rosters.”
The springtime front-loaded dollars to players allow schools to save their revenue-share pool to supplement players this fall and provide more flexibility when the new single portal window opens in January. Schools are permitted to spend a max of $20.5 million in Year 1 on all athletes in a revenue-share pool created through the NCAA’s House settlement. FSU’s football roster stands to be one of the more lucrative in the industry from a revenue-share perspective as the school intends to spend more than 80% of its pool on the sport.
But the change in Tallahassee goes well beyond revenue share.
The school’s more than $250 million in renovations to Doak Campbell Stadium was a massive undertaking. Roughly 13,000 bleacher seats were removed and replaced with premium seating, including patios, loge boxes, luxury suites and club chairbacks. There are two new video boards, an updated sound system and a redesigned tunnel entrance.
The premium seating is essential both to drive revenue and to lure fans into the stands for a more comfortable gameday experience. A study found that Doak Campbell Stadium was $13 million annually behind the average SEC football stadium in home game revenue, Alford says.
The new renovations should generate at least $9 million in additional revenue a year.
In a comment that speaks to the importance of home game ticket sales, one person close to the program said, “That stadium has to be a money-printing machine for the athletic department.”
It’s important to win enough games in order to fill the stadium and generate more money to … win more games. It’s a vicious cycle of college athletics and one, here at Florida State, made more critical by the school’s unwavering public desire to, eventually, leave the ACC and join the Big Ten or SEC.
After all, FSU’s lawsuit (along with Clemson) resulted in the ACC adopting a new uneven distribution model that should generate at least $10 million more annually and as much as $25 million to schools achieving high television figures and on-field success in football and basketball. The conference also defined exit penalties for schools wanting to leave, an amount that decreases over time, dropping below $100 million in 2030 — an important date.
Stakeholders believe that the next major shift within the industry will come between the years 2030-32, when a litany of events could trigger sweeping change in a college sports landscape already made unstable as it shifts into a more professionalized model.
Where is Florida State’s place in that shakeup?
Perhaps such a question is determined by how much winning is done.
How will the Seminoles handle adversity?
We’ll know the answer Saturday night in a game against another program that, one day, may be battling with Florida State in the hierarchy of the sport’s future realignment.
“Where’s our place in the future?” asked Ponder rhetorically. “The numbers say who we are: No matter who we play, people are watching. Florida State will have a place in the future and a prominent one.”
Category: General Sports
