Mike Norvell is the Portal King, but Florida State's blowout loss to Boston College proves that isn't enough
Mike Norvell is the real Portal King.
Even though Florida State’s season ended with the bitter disappointment of being left out of the College Football Playoff, there is no taking away the team Norvell built a year ago. All of the best players Florida State had on that roster in 2023 were transfers, including the quarterback, who suffered a season-ending injury that led to the Seminoles’ snub.
But as we watched Florida State get beat handily by Boston College 28-13 on Monday evening — yes, you read the right — we now have to ask this question: Is being the Portal King what you want at a program that expects to compete for national titles?
In this new era of college football, one where transfers and NIL have taken center stage, there are new ways to build a roster. Michigan, Washington and even Florida State proved a year ago you do not have to recruit like Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State to win it all.
But was last year the beginning of a new era or just a weird season? We’ll get the answer to that question as the years go by.
What is certain is this: Being a transactional program that relies heavily on the portal — and not dominant high school recruiting — may be able to have a really good season. Maybe even a national title-winning season. But it is not the recipe for sustained, year-over-year success.
It still blows my mind that Norvell was able to find Keon Coleman, Johnny Wilson, Trey Benson and Jared Verse and many others in the portal (Jordan Travis transferred in under Willie Taggart). It’s also impressive that most of those guys weren’t one-year rentals. Florida State did a good job of keeping many of those transfers on its roster for multiple years and developing them into bonafide studs.
But is what Florida State became in 2024 worth it? Can the fanbase of one of the storied programs in college football stomach having a transactional program, one that has very good seasons sometimes but really bad ones in return? Florida State is 0-2 in the ACC after Week 1. Incredible.
Florida State’s brand is better than having to rely so heavily on the portal. They are a team that has won a national title in the somewhat recent past, it made the College Football Playoff in the four-team era and it’s one of the most storied programs in the history of this sport.
Norvell took over at a time when the Seminoles were in the dumps. It’s understandable that he had to turn to the portal to flip the roster. But four seasons into his tenure at Florida State, shouldn’t the script have flipped into dominating high school football recruiting?
The best programs in college football will always recruit dominant classes. Now, they may lose players more rapidly as they hit the portal for quicker paths to the field or fat checks, but the nucleus of these rosters are going to be hand-picked talent that is developed internally. Those programs supplement already-stacked rosters with portal additions that are luxury pickups, not necessities.
Why? Because the portal is really, really hard to master. The recruiting window is often days and in many cases, there isn’t much film. Unless you’re getting a one-year rental who was a stud at his previous stop already — the Colemans of the world are rare — then how good can your hit rate be year over year? How many times can Florida State use the portal to create a team like its 2023 iteration?
You may notice it has taken quite a bit of time to even mention quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei despite the fact he is the talk of the Internet right now. It’s true that Florida State invested a lot of trust into the young man and it’s abundantly clear that he isn’t close to being what his recruiting profile promised. There’s no way around it. He’s having a rough go of it.
If Uiagalelei was a stud would Florida State have gotten blown off the field by BC? Probably not. But DJU wasn’t playing defense as BC ran very successfully through the teeth of the Seminoles defense when they so badly needed stops. This isn’t just a DJU problem, especially considering there are no consistent playmakers on Florida State’s offense. This is a roster problem.
Looking back at ranking Florida State in the top-10 in the preseason and anticipating this season was going to be a revenge tour for a 2023 campaign that was stolen from it, that whole thought process is just silly.
How could Florida State be elite having to replace Travis, Coleman, Wilson, Verse, Benson and so many others when it hasn’t recruited elite-level classes? Did we expect that the Portal King was going to sustain national title-like success with this roster-building plan?
Norvell is a good coach. He has done a really good job with Florida State in the time that he has been there. Heck, the man was a candidate to replace Nick Saban at Alabama during the offseason.
But Florida State, despite being a Blue Blood and located in one of the most talent-rich states in the country, has yet to sign a top-10 class under his leadership. In fact, they’ve been outside of the top 20 three of those cycles. They had Travis Hunter committed in the 2022 cycle, but lost him on National Signing Day to Jackson State.
The high school recruiting hasn’t been enough. That’s what got us here today and it has to change.
Being the Portal King only gets you so far.