The Light’s Gone Out At Florida State

Pretty much from the moment the Florida State Seminoles decided to retain Mike Norvell as their coach for the 2026 season, the word out of the football program has been pain and misery. They lost three dozen players to either graduation or the transfer portal, they couldn't entice any of the better available quarterbacks, and they have been famously poor at recruiting throughout the Norvell era. Going into the season, the mood was dour, and an unimpressive victory over New Mexico State in Week 0 didn't improve the mood very much. When the big Labor Day weekend of games came to its conclusion with an FSU home matchup against SMU, and America was treated to a darkened stadium and an extended delay, it was hard for me personally to not sit there cackling like Max Cady at the status of my once-proud football school.

That's right! SMU–FSU kicked off nearly two hours late thanks to an unexplained power outage at Doak Campbell Stadium. As a Tallahassee native, my first thought was: Of course, there must be a hurricane or thunderstorm involved. But no, the weather was perfect (except for the humidity, and that's normal). The lights would flicker on and off for a while. It seems to have been some kind of power drain at the stadium (not a metaphor) that caused problems. After the lights did come on, the game had already lost any juice it might've had, starting with our problematic mascot throwing the flaming spear onto midfield and having it fall with a lifeless thud rather than stick the landing (also not a metaphor).

SMU's 27-24 win over Florida State was ugly, lifeless football. At no point in the lead-up to this game did I ever think the Noles would win, nor did I change my mind even as the game stayed close well into the fourth quarter. Florida State played a mostly clean game, forced four turnovers, and outrushed the Mustangs, while SMU was sloppy, inconsistent, and lethargic. But the talent differential was on display. SMU's Kevin Jennings threw for 430 yards, going 26-of-36 with three TDs, and even with the two INTs he threw, he more than tripled the yards FSU's Ashton Daniels accounted for. In short, it was a game Florida State could've lost by 20 but only lost by one score, a gimme field goal with 21 seconds left.

I expect this to be a bad season for the Noles. I expect it to be one of our worst, actually. Florida State has been in the wilderness for over a decade, and whatever memories anyone has of the dominant days are stretching thinner and thinner. Florida State owes Norvell a lot of money thanks to one great season, and there's no guarantee, with an increasingly stingy administration and a booster circuit that cannot compete with the bigger purses in the sport, that they will buy themselves out of it even after a miserable year. It's a program stuck in football limbo, no longer even good enough to push around an ACC they are desperate to escape. Only Clemson knows our pain.