The banner circling Doak Campbell Stadium on October 31 was not subtle. It demanded that Florida State fire Mike Norvell and even managed to misspell his name. Board of Trustee Peter Collins was also named.
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The message was aimed at a program that had gone from an undefeated regular season in 2023 to another difficult fall, and the crowd had little reason to argue with the frustration behind it. Now comes the expensive part after FSU fired Mike Norvell shortly after the Clemson game.
“The president, I watched the interview today because I was interested,” former OSU HC Urban Meyer said on his Triple Option podcast on November 3. “He sounds like a guy, I mean, the financial restraints. I know they’ll find the money, but as of now, that place is in financial ruins.”
Norvell’s dismissal came after a 3-5 start to the 2026 season. He leaves Tallahassee with a 41-39 record across six-plus seasons, a long way from the 13-0 regular season and ACC championship that earned him an eight-year, $84 million extension before the 2024 campaign.
The contract has now become a problem for the people who decided to move on. Reports put his buyout somewhere between $47 million and $50.3 million, depending on the calculation and the remaining compensation.
Either way, it ranks among the largest coaching buyouts in college football history. And that is only Norvell. Florida State also dismissed defensive coordinator Tony White.
CBS Sports reported that the combined buyouts for Norvell and his assistants could exceed $65 million. On3 sources have put the wider cost of firing the staff and making the next hire in the region at $100 million.
That is the kind of bill that makes even a wealthy football program stop and count. And that’s where Urban Meyer’s concerns arise for a historic powerhouse program like Florida State.
“To hire new staff, buyouts, paying off the coaching staff, and hire a quality new head coach with the market it is, I’m curious,” Urban Meyer said. “I love Mike Norvell; he’s going to be fine. [But] what the hell do they do at Florida State?”
Florida State’s athletics department reported $437 million in athletics-related debt for fiscal year 2025, up from $237 million the previous year. Much of that debt is tied to revenue bonds for the Doak Campbell Stadium renovation and a new football operations centre.
The school also does not have a permanent athletic director in place. Michael Alford was fired in September, leaving president Richard McCullough to oversee the leadership transition alongside the coaching search.
McCullough has defended the decision to fire Norvell despite the financial burden. Speaking after the dismissal, he put the choice in simple terms: “How can we afford not to do this?”
Meyer, though, now sees a different route to the next big hire.
Meyer believes the market has already shown Florida State another way to build a program. He pointed to coaches who made their names outside the traditional power-conference spotlight before moving into bigger jobs.
“The table’s been set with [Bob] Chesney and [Curt] Cignetti, and you can get them cheap,” the former OSU and Florida head coach said. “You’re going to go somewhere where a guy’s making $350,000 at a lower-level school, no buyout. That’s what I think is going to start happening.”
Cignetti’s stop at James Madison came before Indiana and winning the national title. Chesney worked his way up through the lower divisions and later coached at JMU before taking the UCLA job, where he remains undefeated in his first season.
“You can’t pay a 10 million, 15 million-dollar buyout,” Urban Meyer said. “You can’t. I keep saying you can’t.” Co-host Rob Stone raised another possibility during the discussion.
“Brian Kelly, his name is going to be bouncing around there as well,” Rob Stone said. “Do you need somebody with that new NIL energy? Not that Brian Kelly doesn’t understand the game, but somebody who’s maybe a little hungrier?”
The question is whether Florida State should turn to an older coach with a long record of winning or look for someone with a younger approach to the current recruiting and NIL environment.
Kelly is certainly not short on experience. He coached at Central Michigan, Cincinnati, Notre Dame, and LSU, and has won at every major stop. His LSU team went 34-14 before the school fired him during the 2025 season.
He also has experience dealing with the demands of a modern college football program, including the transfer portal and NIL. Interestingly, that is now more than just speculation to discuss.
“When you’re talking to an unemployed football coach, every job’s a great job,” Kelly said on November 3 on SiriusXM’s Radio. But he also pointed to his familiarity with the Seminoles, their history and their fan base. He called the prospect of leading the program “an honor and privilege.”
There is also the financial question. Kelly’s previous LSU contract produced a buyout reported at more than $50 million. Florida State has just taken on a massive obligation to Norvell.
Paying another premium for a veteran coach would run directly into the problem Meyer described. The Seminoles still have reasons to believe this can be an attractive job.
They have a national championship history, a large fan base, and a stadium that can become a difficult place for visiting teams. Norvell showed what the program could look like when everything worked in 2022 and 2023.