Florida State has fired Mike Norvell and opened its search for a new head coach, beginning a rebuild three years removed from an undefeated regular season. The school also dismissed athletic director Mike Alford in September and has yet to hire a permanent replacement, leaving questions about money and leadership inside the athletic department.
The program's ceiling is not in doubt. Norvell won 19 straight games across 2022 and 2023 and went 13-0 in the 2023 regular season before becoming the first undefeated Power Five champion left out of the College Football Playoff. Florida State then went 10-23 over the following 33 games, including 4-17 in ACC play since the start of 2024, and has lost 12 straight road games, tied for the longest streak in school history.
The transition will not be cheap. Buyouts for Norvell and his assistants could eclipse $65 million, with Norvell alone owed between $47.1 million and $50.3 million, either figure ranking as the third-largest buyout in college football history, though it could be offset by his salary at a future job. Florida State closed fiscal year 2025 with $437 million in athletics-related debt, up from $237 million a year earlier, most of it tied to bonds for the renovation of Doak Campbell Stadium and a new football operations building.
CBS Sports compiled a list of seven candidates from industry sources. Manny Diaz, now Duke's head coach, began his career in Tallahassee as a graduate assistant under Bobby Bowden and Mickey Andrews. He is 24-11 at Duke and won the ACC Championship Game in 2025, but his 21-15 tenure at Miami, which fired him in December 2021, could test the patience of the fan base.
Missouri's Eli Drinkwitz is 64-32 as an FBS head coach, with an 11-2 season in 2023 that ended in a Cotton Bowl win over Ohio State, and his Tigers are ranked again this fall. He signed a six-year contract in December averaging $10.75 million through 2031 and would owe Missouri $5 million if he left before Dec. 1, and $4 million after that. The concerns are his 3-10 record against AP Top 25 teams since 2024 and whether Florida State can match his salary after committing $50 million to the last coach.
Wake Forest's Jake Dickert has the Demon Deacons at 7-1 and alone in second place in the ACC after a 9-4 debut, the most wins by a first-year coach in program history. However, sources told CBS Sports that Wake Forest assistant coaches have noncompete clauses barring them from taking ACC jobs for at least one year, and because the school is private, it is unknown whether the 43-year-old head coach's contract contains similar language.
Arizona State's Kenny Dillingham was Norvell's offensive coordinator at Florida State in 2020 and 2021, won the Big 12 and reached the playoff in 2024, and signed a five-year deal averaging $7.5 million annually after Michigan rumors surfaced, though his close relationship with Norvell could complicate talks. New Mexico's Jason Eck is 16-5 over two seasons with the nation's top scoring defense at 11.9 points per game, but he has never led a power-conference program and has no ties to the Southeast.
Two SEC defensive coordinators complete the list. LSU's Blake Baker, the highest-paid assistant in the country, inherited a defense ranked 81st nationally in scoring and held opponents to 18.3 points per game in 2025, LSU's best mark since 2016. Georgia's Glenn Schumann, 36, was born in Valdosta, Georgia, less than 100 miles from Tallahassee, and his grandfather Jack Haskin coached at Florida State and is in the school's Hall of Fame, though Schumann has never been a head coach.
The wild cards are SMU's Rhett Lashlee and former Seminoles coach Jimbo Fisher. Lashlee is well compensated in Dallas with some of the conference's deepest NIL resources, making him difficult to pull away. Fisher left Florida State in December 2016 with an 83-23 record and a national championship before being fired at Texas A&M in 2023, but some boosters in Tallahassee are intrigued by a reunion, and he still owns a home in the city.
