At 7:29 p.m. ET, six minutes before Florida State was scheduled to kick off its 2026 ACC opener in Week 1 against No. 19 SMU, there was a power surge in Doak Campbell Stadium that shorted the stadium lights and forced a one-hour and forty-minute delay.
Kickoff is now scheduled for 9:15 p.m. ET, but the game is being played with limited power. The lights are not fully restored, and according to ESPN’s Taylor McGregor, the game will be played with the clock set on the field and without a scoreboard, a public address announcer, and in-helmet communication from coaches to players.
The game being played at all seemingly avoids a logistical nightmare, with SMU scheduled to host UC Davis in Week 2 on Saturday (Florida State is on a Week 2 bye). However, it’s another high-profile embarrassment for a program that has not been able to get out of its own way since the 13-0 ACC Championship run in 2023.
Florida State has a primetime disaster a year after major Doak Campbell renovations
Ahead of the 2025 season, Florida State completed major renovations on Doak Campbell Stadium, which were expected to cost $265 million but reportedly exceeded that cost. Athletic director Michael Alford's investment in stadium upgrades, cutting seating capacity to add more suites, among other changes, and a football-only training facility at the start of the NIL era, was a questionable decision on its own.
However, if you’re going to spend that much money on the football stadium, it had better be functional on game days, particularly in the ACC opener on ESPN in primetime. This is a freak situation, surely, but it adds to the perception of a dysfunctional football program.
Florida State was on top of the ACC in 2023, beating Louisville to win its first conference title under Mike Norvell. With quarterback Jordan Travis injured, the program was controversially left out of the final four-team College Football Playoff. From that moment, it’s been all downhill in Tallahassee.
Amid massive opt-outs, the Seminoles were blown out by Georgia in the Orange Bowl, 63-3. That high-profile blowout loss came amid the school filing a lawsuit against the ACC, along with Clemson, to challenge the league’s grant of rights and prohibitive exit fee.
That lawsuit didn’t grant Florida State’s exit from the ACC, but it did alter the revenue distribution in the league and dramatically lowered the cost to get out at a later date. So, it was largely a win for Florida State, but it turned into a punchline when the program, essentially suing to say it was too good for the ACC, proceeded to lose 13 of its next 16 conference games over the next two seasons.
Now, after refusing to fire Mike Norvell, who was rewarded for the 2023 season with a contract extension through the 2031 season, which carries a buyout that is hovering around $50 million if he were to be fired this season and was north of that $50 million figure a year ago, the Seminoles are desperate to turn the program around and have to do it essentially playing backyard football in a high-profile spot on Labor Day.
Could anything else possibly go wrong for this program before Florida State finally gets a fresh start from the top down?
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