FSU Football: Mike Norvell's Proof of Concept & Roster Construction Debate
Mike Norvell is so far ahead of the curve in the talent evaluation and aquisition business it's hard to see right now. Let's get into it.
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Proof of Concept
What a year it has been for Florida State Football and Mike Norvell. Coming off of back to back losing seasons with no bowl bid, Norvell guided his Seminoles to a nine and three record and a Big Three State Championship. He did so dominating Miami by a score fourty-five to three in a game that just felt like a dam of emotions burst out on the field and to the victor went the spoils. The Florida game was a much tighter affair but the Noles simply would not be denied and Jordan Travis put up forty-five for the second time. Not to mention the win over the eventual SEC West champion, LSU Tigers, to start the year.
All these amazing things, yet the Noles still sit at seventeenth in the 247 Composite Team Rankings. Right around the same exact spot Mike Norvell has recruited since arriving in Tallahassee, along with the dreaded Covid-19 pandemic. How is that possible riding a five game win streak to end the season unlike anything we have seen in at least nine years. That’s the big question among fans and skeptics alike, how?
Well sit tight and grab you up a comfortable place to sit because I’m about to explain it to ya the best I can. The very first thing we will look at is quality over quantity. Florida State currently holds the commitment of sixteen high-school recruits. This gives them an average of 90.27. That is basically a four star average. Three teams ahead of the Noles in the rankings have nineteen commitments. The rest are heavily in the 22-25 commitment range a full six to nine players more than FSU. While FSU has been almost dead quiet on the trail the past month they haven’t had a rash of decommitments either. I expect Norvell to close strong with at least another four guys to end up firmly in the top fifteen of the highschool rankings and maintain his top ten 2024 class as well.
The next point that must be addressed is that of the “band-aid” perception slapped onto transfer portal players. This is no doubt due to the long tradition of mainly graduate transfers and waivers being extremely rare. If you got a transfer in the past it was generally for one year with some sort of guarentees being made back and forth due to the inherent risk involved. I could argue the exact opposite is becoming true today. Now if you spend three million dollars cash, and a million in jet fuel to sign a kid, he has a one time get out of jail free card. He can take that California money and run straight home to Tallahassee without ever missing a single snap of camp reps.
The ironic point is after that same kid made that journey he would now be stuck. Stuck in the same situation the rest of college football players were in for a hundred years and FSU can count on that player being there at the the very least two years. I won’t expand too much on this quite yet I just want you to conisder the facts of what I said and what it means for that dynamic. Sure sounds like a redshirt freshman entering the portal following that season is the closest thing you can get to a traditional program building high-school player. Not only that, but they are one year into strength and conditioning and college life while also being humbled by the scout team or just college repititions in general, not to mention coaches can get their hands on said film.
Now after reading all that consider Mike Norvell’s approach again and what he has absolutely excelled at when it comes to recruiting the portal. He gets those guys that are largely unproven but check all the boxes. Not only does he get these guys into the Florida State Football program, he gets them to buy in one hundred percent. He tells the the truth all the time, no pussy-footing around feelings or telling them what they want to hear.
He gets these guys to do all that for multiple years. He has built his program around a beautiful mix of these guys from all over and he doesn’t appear to be deviating from that plan. FSU fans are forced to watch other teams battle it out for the majority of these big new, top 150 high school kids. Norvell gets his fair share and that average is steadily increasing. He has a belief in his evaluation process and how he recruits that basically eliminates FSU from a lot of these made for Hollywood recruitments. It has panned out so far and I honestly believe he is right on track and absolutely crushing it. September 3rd in Orlando looms large as the very first test of Norvell’s roster after another year in his system.
These recruiting services are simply not able to properly value a Johnny Wilson and that’s ok. I’m ok with my head coach being an absolute pioneer in a brand new era of college football. Buy in and team culture has become everything. Talent will always be supercede everything but you need that talent on the field playing their best ball for you. I’d much rather be the guy that gets Johnny Wilson in the portal than be the school that goes through the struggles, growth into manhood etc for two years and then left empty handed. I want to be the team that gets him for two maybe three legit playing years. As I sit here writing this article FSU has had four kids enter the transfer portal. One of the lowest numbers in the nation at this point. I have a feeling I will end up writing ten thousand words on this subject but after the 2023 season there will be no reason to bring up “proof of concept” because Mike Norvell will be the honorary Mayor of Tallahassee.