The Florida State administration made the unpopular decision to retain Mike Norvell for at least the 2026 season. The huge buyout courtesy of the contract extension Mike Norvell received after the 2023 season is the only reason he’s still employed as FSU’s head coach.
It was unclear if Mike Norvell would return after two seasons that failed to meet expectations, and one name that many former players and some fans kept mentioning was former head coach Jimbo Fisher.
Fisher kept his home in Tallahassee after leaving FSU for the Texas A&M job during the 2017 season. He works as an analyst for the ACC Network and openly spoke about his love for FSU and the great moments he had while coaching in Tallahassee before FSU hosted the Miami Hurricanes earlier this year.
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Fisher was nearly in tears, and that seemed to warm some fans up to the idea of Fisher returning to Tallahassee if the opportunity presented itself. Fisher let it be known he wanted to return to coaching, and once FSU lost to Stanford, Clemson, and NC State, it seemed that door might have opened enough for it to happen.
Norvell and Fisher share the same agent. If there was any chance for Fisher to return to Tallahassee as the head coach, this was likely it. Fisher could have taken less money than usual due to the buyout he received from Texas A&M when they fired him a couple of years ago. However, the fact that it didn’t happen, and Fisher’s name hasn’t been associated with any of the open jobs, means there may not be a market for him.
Fisher burned some bridges when he left FSU, and some of those wounds remain. His track record at Texas A&M wasn’t great, and his final couple of years at FSU were not championship-level. I was never a fan of potentially bringing him back, but I can see why some folks thought it might work.
It seems we can finally move past the possibility of him ever coming back as a head coach at FSU.