Michael Alford expects Florida State to compete for national championships

A lot has changed in Tallahassee since athletic director Michael Alford took over the reins of the Florida State program in 2021 for David Coburn. In the last decade, the Seminoles ranked last in the ACC in percentage of budget invested in football, and ironically a decade ago was the last time the Seminoles took home a national championship.

At spring meetings, Alford insisted that budgetary changes have been made within Florida State’s football program, which could bring them closer to making a national championship appearance once again.

“We’ve already made big strides. When I first became athletic director, with the support of the board of trustees and the president, we made significant upgrades to personnel, really modernizing the front office of the football program,” Alford said. “You see what we’re doing with facilities, we’ve made investments into the weight room, we made an investment and re-did the whole locker room. We re-did the playing surface. We have made significant investments in that sport and other sports. We are now investing, we’re competing at a high level and you’ve seen the success from that as well.”

In the last eight seasons, the Seminoles are exactly .500 in conference games with a 32-32 record. Florida State hasn’t won a conference title since 2014, but Alford has his sights set on even bigger for FSU.

“We need to compete, not only for conference championships, compete for national championships. That’s where we’re investing,” Alford said.

Alford doesn’t exclusively have that national championship standard for his football team either, as he expects the same from all of his athletic programs, which according to him have the funding to make those expectations just.

“Something I’m very proud about is that we fund all of our programs to compete for championships, not every university can say that,” Alford said. “I mean they’re all funded in the top of the conference, they’re all funded top 20 nationally, and it’s something we take pride in because we do compete and the student-athlete experience of all of those sports, all 20 of our sports, is second to none because we do invest in them.”

Alford added, “My goals is always for them to walk away with a top 20 public institution diploma in the left hand and some championship rings on the right when they graduate, that’s out goal for every athlete and we’re honest about that. So we’re going to continue to fund them to compete for championships.”