Bianchi: FSU fires Mike Norvell, but downfall began when playoff committee robbed him of his mojo

Mike Norvell was fired as Florida State's football coach Sunday, but I believe he actually lost his job nearly three years ago. On Dec. 3, 2023, to be exact.

That was the day the College Football Playoff selection committee robbed his undefeated Seminoles of an opportunity to compete for a national championship. That was the day everything Norvell had preached to his players about hard work, sacrifice and winning suddenly rang hollow. And that was the day something inside Mike Norvell seemed to die as well.

I can still see the look on his face. Devastation. Disbelief. Betrayal. It was the look of a man who had just discovered that everything he believed about college football was a lie.

His Seminoles had done everything he'd asked. They had worked. They had sacrificed. They had overcome adversity. They had won every single game, including the ACC championship. Thirteen games. Thirteen victories. Zero losses. And their reward? A swift kick in the teeth from the College Football Playoff selection committee.

The committee inexplicably left undefeated Florida State out of the four-team playoff, choosing one-loss Alabama instead. It was the only time an undefeated Power Four team had been left out of the playoff. The justification was that the Seminoles weren't the same team without injured quarterback Jordan Travis.

Imagine explaining that to a locker room full of young men who had spent an entire year believing their coach's most sacred promise: Do your job. Win your games. Take care of your business. And you'll get your opportunity to compete for a national championship.

The committee didn't just steal Florida State's championship opportunity that day. It stole something from Mike Norvell, too. His belief. His confidence. His mojo. And, looking back now, I don't think he ever got it back.

Norvell's firing Sunday came after another humiliating defeat, this one a 36-24 home loss to a mediocre Clemson team. His final record: 41-39 over nearly seven seasons. But the most damning statistic is this: Since that glorious 13-0 season ended in heartbreak, Florida State has gone an unfathomable 10-23.

Think about that. The coach who couldn't lose suddenly couldn't win. The offensive mastermind seemingly forgot how to call plays. The quarterback whisperer couldn't find a quarterback. The talent evaluator who once worked the transfer portal like a Wall Street wizard suddenly seemed incapable of distinguishing a difference-maker from a benchwarmer.

How does that happen? How does a coach who seemingly had all the answers suddenly find himself with none? Maybe the explanation is simpler than we want to believe. Maybe Mike Norvell was never the same after the day college football broke his heart.

The first indication came weeks after the playoff snub, when more than 20 Seminoles opted out of the Orange Bowl or entered the transfer portal. The result was a 63-3 annihilation by Georgia — the most lopsided result in the history of bowl games. It wasn't a football game. It was a nationally televised funeral for everything Florida State had built. And the corpse never quite came back to life.

The Seminoles went 2-10 in 2024, 5-7 last season and were 3-5 this season when the university finally decided enough was enough.

To be fair, Norvell wasn't the only one who failed. Florida State's administration was painfully slow to recognize that college football had become a billionaire's auction house, where NIL money and the transfer portal had turned roster building into an arms race. The Seminoles sometimes looked like a Blockbuster manager trying to figure out why everybody was suddenly watching Netflix.

Eventually, FSU opened its wallet and moths flew out, but by then the damage had been done. Even increased spending couldn't fix the quarterback failures, personnel mistakes and coaching shortcomings.

And let's not forget the colossal miscalculation by former athletic director Michael Alford, who rewarded Norvell with a massive contract extension after the 2023 season. At the time, it seemed perfectly reasonable. Who knew Florida State was paying filet mignon prices for a coach who was about to start serving gas-station hot dogs? That decision left the financially strained athletic department staring at a buyout of roughly $50 million.

Which is why Florida State deserves some credit for giving Norvell every conceivable opportunity to resurrect his career. The university invested more resources. Revamped personnel operations. Swallowed embarrassing losses. Endured the outrage of an increasingly furious fan base.

All Norvell had to do Saturday was beat a beatable Clemson team at home, then navigate a remaining schedule filled with winnable games. Instead, predictably, the Seminoles lost again.

Before kickoff Saturday night, some disgruntled fan even hired a plane to circle Doak Campbell Stadium carrying a banner demanding that FSU "Fire Novell." Good grief. The poor guy couldn't even get fired with his name spelled correctly. By the fourth quarter, much of the stadium had emptied. And by Sunday, Norvell was unemployed.

There will be those who insist the playoff snub is merely a convenient excuse for a coach who stopped recruiting effectively, stopped developing quarterbacks and stopped winning football games. They're not entirely wrong. Norvell must own his failures.

But I keep coming back to that Sunday in December 2023. That stunned expression. That crushed spirit. That realization that the rules he had preached to his players apparently didn't apply when television ratings, conference politics and committee opinions entered the equation.

Perhaps the cruelest irony is that Norvell spent the next three seasons trying desperately to prove he was still the coach who had built that undefeated team. Instead, every defeat made him look more like a desperate man chasing a ghost.

Mike Norvell will leave Florida State with tens of millions of dollars, a battered reputation and the haunting memory of what might have been. He'll have plenty of time to contemplate the mistakes that cost him his job, from the quarterbacks he recruited to the games he inexplicably lost.

But I wonder whether he'll ever stop thinking about Dec. 3, 2023. About that undefeated team. About the championship opportunity that was taken away. About the promise he made to his players that winning every game would be enough.

Because in the end, the cruelest part of Norvell's downfall isn't so much that he forgot how to win.

It's that he never recovered from the cruel injustice of discovering that sometimes winning isn't enough.

Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com . Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my radio show "Game On" every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen .