At the risk of undoing months of coping therapy and reopening old scars all over the Florida Panhandle, it’s worth taking a moment to remember just how badly Florida State got jobbed at the end of last season. In the space of just a few weeks, Florida State went from undefeated to humiliated to annihilated. As their 2024 season begins in Dublin Saturday against Georgia Tech, the Seminoles are trying their best to put that crushing disappointment behind them.
“I like this team. I like how this team has come together,” Florida State head coach Mike Norvell said earlier this week. “I really do respect these young men for who they are and what they’re all about. It’s just like I told them, you do all the work and you build it up. … It’s so few games, but now you get to go put it on display.”
This will be the first look anyone outside Tallahassee has gotten at the Seminoles since they were a garnet-and-gold grease stain on the cleats of the Georgia Bulldogs in the Orange Bowl in January. That 63-3 defeat, combined with the Seminoles’ humbling exclusion from the College Football Playoff, put a serious dent in Florida State’s aim to reclaim the glory of the Bobby Bowden-era national championship days.
A team has two ways to move on from this kind of ego-shattering, reputation-staining defeat: look to the future or accept the past. Norvell is wise enough to know that he can’t keep playing the “poor us” card. For one thing, an enormous and significant chunk of his team — starting with new quarterback DJ Uiagalelei — wasn’t even in a Florida State uniform at the Orange Bowl. Plus, focusing on the negative is a mindset that leads to further negativity … right?
“Our objective this year is to go get better,” Norvell said at ACC’s media day in July. “Coming off what was a 13-0 regular season and championship game was something that was really a special experience for our entire program. It sets the stage and opportunity for us to continue to push and continue to elevate this program to ultimately where it deserves to be. That’s among the nation’s elite, when you look across the course of college football.”
Here’s another thought: Use the snub and the stomp as fuel. Embrace the pain. Stay petty.
Remember what it felt like to be discarded. Put up “63-3” signs in the weight room. Rage at the College Football Playoff committee’s on-the-fly — and, frankly, somewhat ghoulish — use of former QB Jordan Travis’ season-ending injury as justification for the snub. Remember, every quarter of every game — the goal is to control your own destiny, not leave it in the hands of a committee.
(Yes, there were plenty of valid arguments for Florida State to be left out of the playoff, starting with the fact that the team that whomped them in Miami had a pretty good case all its own. Plus, any time you have five conferences competing for four spots, there’s always the chance that someone is going to be left without a seat at the table. It was the College Football Playoff’s good fortune that it took a decade for that to happen. But motivational speeches don’t include rebuttals, so we’ll leave all that aside for now.)
Fortunately for Florida State, the on-ramp to the College Football Playoff is a whole lot wider this year. Had the 12-team playoff existed last year, fifth-seeded Florida State would have welcomed 12th-seed Oklahoma to Tallahassee for an opening-round game.
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Unfortunately for Florida State, the on-ramp is a crowded one, and nobody’s going to let anyone merge. The Noles are the favorite to win the conference, but only by a whisker over Clemson, and Miami looms large in the rearview mirror. The ACC isn’t getting three teams into the playoff, and depending on how stacked the SEC and Big Ten are, might not get more than the one via the guaranteed-bye conference champion slot.
The playoff snub and Orange Bowl debacle led to massive turnover in Tallahassee, and it’s not yet certain how that will shake out. Florida State saw 10 players drafted by the NFL in April, including Travis. (He went to the Jets; fortunately, he’s already accustomed to disappointment.)
Unlike his primary ACC rival, Norvell hit the transfer portal hard, bringing in Uiagalelei from Oregon State and 16 others. Norvell also locked down some job security for himself, using Alabama’s rumored interest in him to sign a new eight-year contract extension that will pay him more than $10 million a year.
Will all the turnover lead to similar success? To be determined. Florida State will have to fight its way through the ACC this year, with conference games against Clemson at home and Miami and SMU (yep, they’re ACC now) on the road. Add in games against 2023 10-win teams Memphis (home) and Notre Dame (away), and you have a schedule that doesn’t project to an easy playoff berth.
The path, then, is clear: All gas, no brakes, all wins, no letdowns. Florida State knows exactly what can happen when committees get involved in decisions that ought to be handled on the field.
