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The East Coast was largely spared from the ‘coaching carousel’ that occurred when Alabama’s Nick Saban unceremoniously retired on January 10th in an announcement that seemed to come out of nowhere.
In the immediate aftermath of Saban’s retirement, a short list of names emerged to succeed the G.O.A.T. as head coach at the University of Alabama. That list included names like FSU’s Mike Norvell, Clemson’s Dabo Swinny, Steve Sarkisian at Texas, Oregon’s Dan Lanning, and Lane Kiffin at Ole Miss.
As a Florida State graduate and lifelong Seminoles fan, there was a short period of time I was convinced Bama was going to poach Mike Norvell as their next head coach. Having closely watched what Coach Norvell has done with our program in a few short years, I was ready to swear off College Football and my alma mater if they let him go.
Thankfully for me, Norvell signed a massive extension with FSU and stayed put while Alabama announced the hire of Kalen DeBoer out of Washington. Now, a new insider report from ESPN’s Chris Low sheds light on just how close Mike Norvell was to taking the job and how FSU had already identified Lane Kiffin as the #1 replacement for Coach Norvell.
There were also serious discussions with Norvell that day. In fact, in the wee hours of that Friday morning, the fear among Florida State officials was that Norvell was close to trading his FSU garnet for Alabama crimson. Sources told ESPN that Florida State was poised to move quickly if that happened and that Kiffin would be a prime candidate to replace Norvell.
When reached for comment, Coach Norvell wouldn’t confirm that he was offered the Alabama job. As is the case in College Football, there’s never a firm ‘offer’ until the candidate has already agreed to take the position. This way, prestigious programs can always maintain that Coach A or Coach B was never offered the job and thus, never turned it down.
Mike Norvell did shed light on the situation though, telling ESPN “You respect the place. You respect the position. At the end of the day, it still comes down to the right fit. It still comes down to the place you want to be.”
Norvell now stands to make between $10-$11 million in each of the next 8 seasons after signing an extension with Florida State. Interestingly, in the same report Nick Saban shed light on why he retired and how it was ultimately about money.
This is the first time that a name has been mentioned as a potential replacement for Mike Norvell had he taken the Alabama job. And honestly, it’s about as perfect of a fit as there could be in Tallahassee given Lane’s recruiting prowess in the south and FSU‘s willingness to throw resources behind the program.
What remains to be seen, however, was whether or not Lane Kiffin would have been interested in the Florida State job. Lane has seen a lot of success with Ole Miss and he has a considerable amount of job security in Oxford, Mississippi.
That said, FSU faces less recruiting competition from SEC foes like Lane deals with now and until this season when FSU went undefeated and was left out of the College Football Playoffs, it was always believed FSU had an easier path to the Playoffs or National Championship than an SEC team. Going forward, until FSU moves conferences that may be true again as the playoff has expanded an an undefeated ACC team won’t be left out again.