Florida State football did not have the best two seasons, where they went a combined 7-17. That is not the standard that the legendary Bobby Bowden set for this program.
The 2025 campaign started with a bang, where the Seminoles defeated Alabama in the opener by a score of 31-17. This was something that many in the college football landscape did not expect to happen, as the mighty SEC team fell again.
However, the Seminoles stumbled back to Earth later in the year, where they lost seven of their last nine games to ultimately give up hope on what head coach Mike Norvell's vision for the program was. Many fans thought that Norvell was a dead man walking after the Stanford road loss.
The administration felt strongly enough to keep Norvell around. Maybe they thought that he had the potential to return to his 2022 and 2023 form, where they had a combined 23 wins, or it could be that the buyout simply was too steep for their liking.
Florida State fans have seemed to rally around the idea of Duke's Manny Diaz being the next coach of the Seminoles
Nonetheless, the fan base has already prepared their hot boards of their coaches that they want. Many wanted former Penn State option James Franklin (who ended up at Virginia Tech) or former Florida State and Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher to have a reunion.
Some individuals want to see how new head coach Brian Hartline does in his first season at South Florida. Hartline was a rockstar recruiter during his time with the Ohio State Buckeyes. Other than James Franklin, Jimbo Fisher, Brian Hartline, and the occasional Jon Gruden from time to time, there hasn't been much traction with other names.
One Twitter (X) user, "FSUTonyHomie," shared a graphic of current Duke head coach Manny Diaz with the caption "Come on home" that surfaced on the internet.
Come on home @Coach_MannyDiaz pic.twitter.com/qLY2tIjEGW
— FSU Tony (@FsuTonyhomie) May 10, 2026
Diaz has spent five years as a head coach at Miami (three years) and Duke (two years). During his time with the Hurricanes, he had a 2-1 record against Florida State, but he was on the wrong end of the fourth down and 14 moment in the 2021 meeting.
Diaz joined former head coach Mark Richt’s Miami staff as defensive coordinator in 2016 and is known to be one of the better defensive minds in the college game.
The Duke Blue Devils are fresh off a 9-4 season with an ACC Championship over the Virginia Cavaliers. However, their star quarterback Darian Mensah decided to enter the portal and sign with the arch-rival Miami Hurricanes.
If Norvell were not to pan out, Diaz would have at least graduated from Florida State and been a graduate assistant on the 1999 national championship team. If the head coach was able to win nine games in the past two years at Duke, then he could certainly accomplish that with the Seminoles.
The only problem is that the ceiling would be limited with a coach like Diaz because he had never been able to win 10-plus games, and that was part of the reasoning behind his firing with the arch-rival Miami Hurricanes.
This is hoping that Mike Norvell pans out so that we do not have to worry about any of this nonsense.
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