How Mike Norvell keeps Florida State moving forward after a stunning CFP snub
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David Hale, ESPN Staff Writer
DANIA BEACH, Fla. — There’s a moment, a split second, really, just as the weight of the College Playoff Committee’s verdict takes hold for the rest of the Florida State team, that it seems as if the impenetrable wall of optimism and enthusiasm that is Seminoles head coach Mike Norvell might finally collapse.
In the video from the team’s watch party Dec. 3, which was broadcast on national TV following the committee’s most controversial decision in its 10-year history, Norvell is seated center frame, surrounded by his players, including injured QB Jordan Travis just a few feet away. The announcement is made. Groans echo through the room. Travis covers his face with a towel. Players turn to each other in disbelief. Norvell is still.
He taps the tips of his fingers together. He tilts his head downward. It’s instantly obvious he was completely unprepared for this eventuality, and it’s not hard to imagine a war of will roiling in his mind between the entirely reasonable furor that must’ve been his natural response and the measured determination that has become his stock-in-trade through four years leading this program.
This is the moment it should come — the eruption, the anger, the outrage, the flurry of epithets directed at a faraway group of people who upended his worldview, the worldview he’d sold to this team for years, the one that had carried Florida State to 19 straight wins and an undefeated season.
But Norvell catches himself.
He says nothing. He turns and looks at his players. He is still and silent for nearly 10 seconds, though it feels so much longer.
And then he stands up, and he addresses his players.
“This has been the most challenging couple of weeks of coaching I’ve ever had,” Norvell would say 17 days later, the emotion still raw in his voice.
The challenge got bigger after that moment. Nearly two dozen key contributors from this season have opted out, entered the transfer portal or been sidelined with an injury. Florida State won’t play for a national championship, but it will play the two-time defending champs in Georgia in the Capital One Orange Bowl (4 p.m. ET on ESPN) with a third-string QB and a host of new faces at the offensive skill positions. Moreover, Florida State will take the next step — the final step of the 2023 season — knowing the ethos that was the foundation of this year’s 12-0 season was dismantled in a single moment.
And yet, for those who remain at Florida State, the motivation to move forward came in those 10 seconds of silence when Norvell decided to meet the most difficult moment of his coaching career not with anger but with resolve.
In the aftermath of the lowest point of his coaching career, Norvell is doubling down on what he’s always preached.
“I haven’t seen Mike blink at all,” defensive coordinator Adam Fuller said.
HE’S STILL ANGRY. He’ll always be angry, he said.
But before FSU’s title hopes were dashed, Norvell started every day with a boisterous “Good morning!” and, more often than not, ended it the same way — a tongue-in-cheek “Good morning!” at 11 p.m., an in-joke to illustrate just how consistent he is.
So even if he’s still seething over the committee’s decision, each new day at FSU begins the same way.
“You get the ‘Good morning!’ because he’s the same Coach Norvell every day,” linebacker Kalen DeLoach said. “That’s him, 365 days a year.”
There are other quirks of the Norvell experience that have been repeated to the point of obsession over the past few years at Florida State.
There’s the “CLIMB” mantra — an acronym for commitment, little things, intensity, mental toughness, brotherhood — which is etched over a photo of a mountain’s peak that hangs in his office. It’s about growth and progress, with the implication that today’s improvement is more important than the place where yesterday ended.
There’s the tagline he’s applied all season — “for years, actually,” offensive lineman Maurice Smith said — that “all we got is all we need.” In the early days at Florida State, it was an insistence that Florida State was good enough to win, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary on the field, but it’s evolved as the Seminoles have crept ever higher on their journey, and it now serves as a badge of defiance, less about convincing the guys inside the locker room that they’re enough and more about insisting to the world outside that it’s overlooked something essential.
And there’s the old trope about controlling what you can control. There’s probably not a coach in the country who hasn’t said it, but Norvell lives it. He didn’t rage against COVID restrictions that kept him from meeting with his team for the vast majority of his first seven months on the job, and he didn’t throw up his hands in disgust when FSU blew a coverage on a Hail Mary throw to lose to FCS Jacksonville State, and he even laughed off a viral “Fire Mike Norvell” social media campaign after he lost top recruit Travis Hunter to Deion Sanders and Jackson State.
That’s what made his silence in the aftermath of the committee’s announcement so significant. It’s as close as he’s ever come to letting his emotions win out, he said, but if he’d done that, it would be evidence that some things outside his reach could still dictate his actions, and he refuses to allow that to happen.
“There’s opportunity, and that provides choice,” Norvell said. “The thing we continue to hammer with our guys through this journey is this could be a defining moment for you. Focus on your improvement and being better than what you’ve been. It’s hard. A lot of them were hurt. But I believe we’re going to continue to build through our experiences.”
It all would seem like a convenient set of gimmicks to bolster a wounded team after the nadir of its season, except that Norvell has been preaching the same things every day all season long.
“Leadership is not about making a speech,” Norvell said. “It’s about what you do on the field and in meeting rooms and how you approach every single day. You can talk, but if your actions don’t back that up, then nobody’s going to listen.”
WHEN BRADEN FISKE first arrived at Florida State last spring, a highly regarded but unproven transfer from Western Michigan, he was nursing an injury and couldn’t practice fully. But each day before practice, his head coach would sprint the length of the field at FSU’s indoor facility. Occasionally other players would join in, racing Norvell — 20 years their senior — into the end zone. Fiske figured he’d give it a try.
“Fiske can run, man,” receiver Keon Coleman said. “He’s got these little legs he gets going and — it’s funny.”
If Fiske’s sprints were good for a laugh, they also turned heads. It was during those runs folks around FSU realized they might have a star in Fiske. But it was also when Fiske realized how much different his coach at Florida State really was.
“He never misses a race,” Fiske said. “I miss a couple every now and then, depending on how the hamstrings feel, but he never misses a race, and that’s just the person he is and the coach he is.”
Fiske’s racing days are over, he said. He’s got a boot on his foot now as he prepares for Saturday’s Orange Bowl. But he’s still playing, still driven to win, and that’s due, in large part, to his coach.
“You can’t lack motivation when [Norvell] is walking through the building,” Fiske said. “People on the outside only see snippets but if you’re in the program and around it every day, it’s different. It’s different being with a man like Coach Norvell. When I first got here I thought for sure he was going to crack. It never happens. He’s the same man every day no matter what’s going on in his life or his program. That’s why we’re headed where we’re going.”
It’s hard to know exactly what this game means for Florida State now. Is it the final chapter of 2023’s magical season? Is it the first chance to turn the page on the committee’s decision and move forward toward something new? Is it some strange purgatory that is neither an end nor a beginning, but rather a placeholder, a rote exercise that exists on its own timeline?
The oddsmakers certainly don’t think Florida State has much of a chance to win. Norvell and AD Michael Alford have downplayed any interest in celebrating a de facto championship even if the Seminoles do claim victory in the Orange Bowl. And either way, when the calendar turns to 2024 and Norvell surveys what remains of his roster, he will find little similarity to the team that marched off the field in Charlotte with an ACC title and assurances that they’d done enough to earn something more.
“The worst part about it is that [watch party] was the last time that this team — players, coaches, staff — that we’ll all be together in one setting,” Fiske said.
And that’s the true significance of Norvell’s restraint in that moment. What the world will remember is the immense disappointment on the faces of every player in the room, the sadness at Travis’ tweet in which he wished he’d been injured sooner, the outrage that followed from FSU officials apoplectic at being passed over.
But what Norvell hopes the men in that room will remember is that, in one of their last moments together as a team, their head coach was the same guy he’d been in all the other moments they were together.
“We’re still at the beginning of where we’re going,” Norvell said. “There are great days ahead for this program. It still doesn’t give it back for the guys who’ve played their last game here at Florida State, but ultimately we’re excited for our opportunity.
“There’s going to be times in life where things don’t go the right way. What you’ve earned, you don’t always receive the reward for that. But you control your response — what you do with it, the attitude you bring — and that’s what’s going to define your identity.”
It’s 2025 MLB All-Star Home Run Derby day in Atlanta!
Some of the most dynamic home run hitters in baseball will be taking aim at the Truist Park stands on Monday (8 p.m. ET on ESPN) in one of the most anticipated events of the summer.
While the prospect of a back-to-back champion is out of the picture — 2024 winner Teoscar Hernandez is not a part of this year’s field — a number of exciting stars will be taking the field, including Atlanta’s own Matt Olson, who replaced Ronald Acuna Jr. just three days before the event. Will Olson make a run in front of his home crowd? Will Cal Raleigh show off the power that led to 38 home runs in the first half? Or will one of the younger participants take the title?
We have your one-stop shop for everything Derby related, from predictions to live updates once we get underway to analysis and takeaways at the night’s end.
MLB Home Run Derby field
Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners (38 home runs in 2025)
James Wood, Washington Nationals (24)
Junior Caminero, Tampa Bay Rays (23)
Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins (21)
Brent Rooker, Athletics (20)
Matt Olson, Atlanta Braves (17)
Jazz Chisholm Jr., New York Yankees (17)
Oneil Cruz, Pittsburgh Pirates (16)
Live updates
Who is going to win the Derby and who will be the runner-up?
Jeff Passan: Raleigh. His swing is perfect for the Derby: He leads MLB this season in both pull percentage and fly ball percentage, so it’s not as if he needs to recalibrate it to succeed. He has also become a prolific hitter from the right side this season — 16 home runs in 102 at-bats — and his ability to switch between right- and left-handed pitching offers a potential advantage. No switch-hitter (or catcher for that matter) has won a Home Run Derby. The Big Dumper is primed to be the first, beating Buxton in the finals.
Alden Gonzalez: Cruz. He might be wildly inconsistent at this point in his career, but he is perfect for the Derby — young enough to possess the stamina required for a taxing event that could become exhausting in the Atlanta heat; left-handed, in a ballpark where the ball carries out better to right field; and, most importantly, capable of hitting balls at incomprehensible velocities. Raleigh will put on a good show from both sides of the plate but will come in second.
Buster Olney: Olson. He is effectively pinch-hitting for Acuna, and because he received word in the past 72 hours of his participation, he hasn’t had the practice rounds that the other competitors have been going through. But he’s the only person in this group who has done the Derby before, which means he has experienced the accelerated pace, adrenaline and push of the crowd.
His pitcher, Eddie Perez, knows something about performing in a full stadium in Atlanta. And, as Olson acknowledged in a conversation Sunday, the park generally favors left-handed hitters because of the larger distances that right-handed hitters must cover in left field.
Jesse Rogers: Olson. Home-field advantage will mean something this year as hitting in 90-plus degree heat and humidity will be an extra challenge in Atlanta. Olson understands that and can pace himself accordingly. Plus, he was a late addition. He has got nothing to lose. He’ll outlast the young bucks in the field. And I’m not putting Raleigh any lower than second — his first half screams that he’ll be in the finals against Olson.
Jorge Castillo: Wood. His mammoth power isn’t disputed — he can jack baseballs to all fields. But the slight defect in his power package is that he doesn’t hit the ball in the air nearly as often as a typical slugger. Wood ranks 126th out of 155 qualified hitters across the majors in fly ball percentage. And he still has swatted 24 home runs this season. So, in an event where he’s going to do everything he can to lift baseballs, hitting fly balls won’t be an issue, and Wood is going to show off that gigantic power en route to a victory over Cruz in the finals.
Who will hit the longest home run of the night — and how far?
Passan: Cruz hits the ball harder than anyone in baseball history. He’s the choice here, at 493 feet.
Gonzalez: If you exclude the Coors Field version, there have been just six Statcast-era Derby home runs that have traveled 497-plus feet. They were compiled by two men: Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. James Wood — all 6-foot-7, 234 pounds of him — will become the third.
Olney: James Wood has the easy Stanton- and Judge-type power, and he will clear the Chophouse with the longest homer. Let’s say 497 feet.
Rogers: Hopefully he doesn’t injure himself doing it, but Buxton will break out his massive strength and crush a ball at least 505 feet. I don’t see him advancing far in the event, but for one swing, he’ll own the night.
Castillo: Cruz hits baseballs hard and far. He’ll crush a few bombs, and one will reach an even 500 feet.
Who is the one slugger fans will know much better after the Derby?
Passan: Buxton capped his first half with a cycle on Saturday, and he’ll carry that into the Derby, where he will remind the world why he was baseball’s No. 1 prospect in 2015. Buxton’s talent has never been in question, just his health. And with his body feeling right, he has the opportunity to put on a show fans won’t soon forget.
Olney: Caminero isn’t a big name and wasn’t a high-end prospect like Wood was earlier in his career. Just 3½ years ago, Caminero was dealt to the Rays by the Cleveland Guardians in a relatively minor November trade for pitcher Tobias Myers. But since then, he has refined his ability to cover inside pitches and is blossoming this year into a player with ridiculous power. He won’t win the Derby, but he’ll open some eyes.
What’s the one moment we’ll all be talking about long after this Derby ends?
Gonzalez: The incredible distances and velocities that will be reached, particularly by Wood, Cruz, Caminero, Raleigh and Buxton. The hot, humid weather at Truist Park will only aid the mind-blowing power that will be on display Monday night.
Rogers: The exhaustion on the hitter’s faces, swinging for home run after home run in the heat and humidity of Hot-lanta!
Castillo: Cruz’s 500-foot blast and a bunch of other lasers he hits in the first two rounds before running out of gas in the finals.
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