FSU football recruiting put all its chips in the pot for the Alabama game and won

FSU has a solid 2026 recruiting class with over 50 percent of its commits as blue-chip players. It ranks No. 13 nationally with 23 commits with most of its needs filled. However, they still need a few important pieces to finish the class, and have already started working on the 2027 class.

Most of the players FSU has circled as remaining targets are committed elsewhere for 2026, and FSU knew they had one guaranteed opportunity to make an impression on those players and players in future recruiting classes.

That opportunity was the season opener against Alabama in the newly renovated Doak Campbell Stadium. It was the only game where FSU coaches knew the crowd would show up and create an atmosphere that top players would want to play. It’s why they invited over 100+ recruits to the game, in hopes of showing things had changed since last year’s 2-10 debacle.

The other side of the coin is that FSU was hosting No. 8 Alabama, a team with more overall talent. If things went sideways, it could have been a disaster with that many recruits in attendance. However, it’s not the first time Mike Norvell has done this. We saw it in 2021 against Notre Dame when FSU was a big underdog against a top 10 team.

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FSU could not have had Saturday’s game go any better if they wrote the script. The atmosphere inside Doak Campbell Stadium was electric from start to finish. All of the fans who complained about losing 10-12K seats with the downsizing, and how that would affect the crowd noise? Please hush now. It was deafening, and the players played like their lives were on the line.

There’s no way any of the recruits in attendance left Tallahassee with anything negative to say. FSU gained a commitment from Jonah Winston on Saturday, but that was expected. However, it’ll be interesting to see how things shake out with some of these top targets. FSU won’t land all of them because money will surely come into play. However, the FSU coaching staff bet on themselves and beat the odds when they needed it most.

FSU will likely bet on themselves again with the Miami game. If they win that one? They might be able to pick and choose who they want.