Using the major-college era tracked by Sports Reference, which begins in 1954, the bottom of FSU history looks like this:
| Rank | Season | Record | Win % | Coach |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1973 | 0–11 | .000 | Larry Jones |
| 2 | 1974 | 1–10 | .091 | Darrell Mudra |
| 3 | 2024 | 2–10 | .167 | Mike Norvell |
| 4 | 1975 | 3–8 | .273 | Darrell Mudra |
| 5 | 2020 | 3–6 | .333 | Mike Norvell |
So 2024 is the third-worst FSU season of the modern major-college era. Its 15.4 points per game ranked 131st of 134 FBS teams.
There is an important difference, though. The 1973–75 teams were part of an already broken program. FSU went 0–11, 1–10, 3–8 consecutively before Bobby Bowden arrived.
Norvell’s 2024 team was coming off 13–1 and an ACC championship.
That’s why I think 2024 is arguably the most shocking bad season in FSU history, even though 1973 was objectively worse.
2. As a collapse, nothing else in FSU history is close
Consider the biggest falls:
| Transition | Records | Winning-% decline |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 → 2024 | 13–1 → 2–10 | –76.2 points |
| 1972 → 1973 | 7–4 → 0–11 | –63.6 |
| 1964 → 1965 | 9–1–1 → 4–5–1 | –41.4 |
| 1980 → 1981 | 10–2 → 6–5 | –28.8 |
| 2016 → 2017 | 10–3 → 7–6 | –23.1 |
The famous pre-Bowden implosion in 1973 was already enormous: Larry Jones went 8–4 in 1971, 7–4 in 1972, then 0–11 in 1973.
Norvell managed an even larger fall from a much higher starting point.
He went:
10–3 → 13–1 → 2–10.
That’s almost absurd when you see it written out.
3. Nationally, it’s one of the biggest collapses of the modern era
Since 1960, the 2023→24 FSU decline ranks No. 2 in all of major college football by year-to-year winning-percentage decline:
Largest year-to-year CFB collapses since 1960
Decline in winning percentage, in percentage points.0pts25pts50pts75pts100ptsSouthern Miss 201…Florida State 202…Tulane 1998→99Kansas 1968→69Lamar 1974→75
The only bigger one was Southern Miss in 2012, which went from 12–2 to 0–12.
And there’s a major distinction that actually makes Norvell’s case worse:
Southern Miss changed coaches.
Larry Fedora produced the 12–2 season and then left for North Carolina. Ellis Johnson inherited the program and went 0–12; Southern Miss fired him after one season.
At FSU, Norvell coached both the 13–1 team and the 2–10 team.
So this wasn’t the result of a disastrous coaching transition. The same head coach assembled both rosters.
4. What makes FSU’s collapse particularly bizarre is what was expected in 2024
This wasn’t supposed to be some massive rebuild where everyone predicted 6–6.
FSU entered 2024:
No. 10 in the preseason AP poll, the defending ACC champion, and picked to win the ACC again by the conference media. FSU returned two All-Americans and nine all-conference players.
And then it went 2–10.
FSU became unranked immediately after starting 0–2; AP noted it was only the third preseason top-10 team since the poll expanded to 25 in 1989 to be unranked after the opening week.
ESPN examined the collapse while it was occurring and found that, across nearly 15,000 top-division team-seasons, FSU was tracking among the largest winning-percentage crashes ever recorded. At the eventual 2–10 finish, the decline remained historically extreme.
5. The part that changes my view of Norvell is 2025
Had FSU gone something like 9–4 in 2025, we could plausibly describe 2024 as one of the strangest aberrations in college football history.
Instead:
2023: 13–1
2024: 2–10
2025: 5–7
2026: 1–1 so far
That’s 8–18 since the beginning of 2024.
And that’s where the historical comparison with Larry Jones becomes interesting.
Jones went:
1971: 8–4
1972: 7–4
1973: 0–11
FSU promptly ended the Jones era.
Norvell went:
2022: 10–3
2023: 13–1
2024: 2–10
2025: 5–7
FSU gave him another season after the failed rebound.
Where I’d rank Norvell historically
If we’re ranking FSU coaches purely by career record, Norvell isn’t near the very bottom. He’s currently 39–35 (.527) at FSU. Darrell Mudra was an astonishing 4–18 (.182), Willie Taggart was 9–12 (.429), and Larry Jones was 15–19 (.441).
But those overall numbers disguise what makes Norvell’s tenure unique.
I’d rank it this way:
| Category | Norvell’s place in FSU history |
|---|---|
| Worst single season | #3 — 2024 |
| Worst one-year collapse | #1, easily |
| Biggest collapse from an elite team | #1, easily |
| Modern NCAA one-year collapses | #2 since 1960 |
| Worst FSU coach by overall record | No |
| Most inexplicable FSU coaching trajectory | Probably #1 |
| Most damaging post-championship collapse | #1 |
And that’s the key distinction for me.
Darrell Mudra had worse FSU teams. Larry Jones had a winless team. Willie Taggart never accomplished anything comparable to Norvell’s 2023 season.
But none of them demonstrated that they could build a 13–0 ACC champion and then immediately lose control of the entire operation.
That makes Norvell one of the strangest cases I can remember in major college football: he has simultaneously produced evidence that he’s an excellent coach and some of the strongest evidence imaginable that he cannot sustainably run an elite program.
And with 2025 failing to produce a real recovery and FSU now 8–18 since 2024, I’m increasingly inclined to regard 2022–23 as the outlier, rather than 2024. That’s the much more damning interpretation.
