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QUESTION: Should Florida State fans be excited about the Mike Norvell hire?
This is a fascinating question, because it deals with multiple aspects of human experience and judgment. One part of this question wonders if Florida State fans should be excited. Should they allow themselves to be highly energized and fired up? That’s one part of this question. The other part concerns Mike Norvell. Is this a good hire on the merits?
When you break up this question into those two halves, this becomes a fascinating study in how fans should respond to hires these days. The short answer: Florida State fans should react how they want to.
That’s not a cop-out. That’s an answer informed by recent college football trends, including at Florida State.
Here’s the explanation: First, many Florida State fans were excited about Willie Taggart at the beginning. I thought that was a good hire. I thought Taggart was on his way up the ladder. I thought that while the first two seasons shouldn’t have generated huge expectations in Tallahassee, Taggart was going to get things figured out in Year 3 and lift FSU back to the top of the sport — not higher than Clemson, but certainly to the 10-win standard Florida has reached under Dan Mullen.
Yet, the first two seasons of Taggart’s tenure — the ONLY TWO seasons, as it turned out — were really bad. They were far worse than I ever could have imagined. This was from a coach who represented, to me, a GOOD hire.
So, were FSU fans wrong to be excited? Well, that’s precisely the point: Hires which look good on paper don’t pan out. Moreover, in recent years, the good hires HAVEN’T panned out at a lot of schools.
Jim Harbaugh at Michigan — no, not terrible, but certainly not great.
Tom Herman at Texas — this has been a shocker to me.
Justin Fuente wobbled at Virginia Tech for a few years, but he might have escaped big trouble. In 2020, we’ll see if he has truly righted the ship in Blacksburg.
Jimbo Fisher looks like a man who is collecting money and doesn’t have anything left to prove at Texas A&M.
Kevin Sumlin — who, I thought, would do well at Arizona, removed from the pressure of the SEC — has been terrible in Tucson. The hire made sense, but the results have been awful.
There are plenty of other examples of good hires on paper not working out in reality.
Then, on the other side, you have Dabo Swinney — remember how clumsy Clemson seemed when it kept him on at the very start of this decade? — and Ed Orgeron kicking butt at their respective programs. Those hires were destroyed by people such as myself. Yet, Clemson and LSU look like geniuses for hiring them.
So, let’s bring this back to Florida State: On paper, Norvell looks like a great hire. He won three straight division championships at Memphis and brought the Tigers to the Cotton Bowl as Group of Five champion. He knows his stuff on offense. His special-teams units are well-coached. He thought about coaching Memphis in the Cotton Bowl but reconsidered, a sign of his commitment to FSU. He certainly seems to be hitting a lot of the right notes.
Yet, this great hire on paper has to translate into reality. I could say FSU did great (as I did when Taggart was hired), but I was wrong about Taggart. I could be very wrong in saying Norvell will thrive.
This is why I say Florida State fans should react however they want to. I don’t want anyone to withhold or repress a feeling of excitement. I also don’t want to sell false or premature hopes.
Truly: React how you want to. I won’t judge, either way.
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