On Monday, the preseason AP Poll for the 2026 college football season was released, and once again, Florida State was unranked. That was expected, but after receiving a few voting points in the Coaches Poll, the Seminoles were notably absent from the “others receiving votes” category.
Miami, SMU, and Louisville were the only ACC teams ranked, while Clemson, Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Cal, and Virginia were among the other 25 teams listed beyond the rankings.
Still, that wasn’t what made this particular preseason AP Poll notable for Florida State. Rather, it was a piece of history that Norvell made ahead of his seventh season as the head coach in Tallahassee.
Through 34 seasons at the helm, Bowden’s teams entered the year unranked four times. Through seven seasons, Norvell’s teams have now started outside the top 25 five times.
Florida State is unranked in the preseason AP Poll for the 6th time in the last 8 years
Two of the times Bobby Bowden’s teams were unranked in the preseason were his first two years in Tallahassee. Prior to his arrival, the program had only been ranked in the preseason once, in 1972 under Larry Jones, and he inherited a team that had gone 4-18 over two years under Darrell Mudra’s leadership.
There was no standard for FSU football, no track record of success, so Bowden had to earn that national respect with a strong start, and he did so, winning 10 games in Year 2 in 1977. After that breakout, the Noles were only unranked again under his leadership twice, in 1982 and 2008, his penultimate campaign.
From there, the Noles were never left off the preseason poll under Jimbo Fisher. Willie Taggart then gave Mudra a run for his money as the worst two-year head coaching stint in program history before Norvell arrived from Memphis.
Because of Taggart’s failures, Norvell had a similar start to Bowden, beginning the season unranked in 2020 and 2021, but that carried over into 2022 when he finally posted a winning record.
Thanks to Bowden, though, Norvell had the advantage of the FSU brand meaning something and demanding preseason respect, but he’s already spent all that capital with four losing seasons in six years. Whatever currency that legacy bought him on the recruiting trail went to waste with lackluster effort and poor evaluation, and the advantages of the transfer portal lulled him into a false sense of security with the success of his transfer-heavy 2023 team.
He’s dragged the program back to irrelevance, aside from a 2023 season that, in hindsight, is clearly an outlier, and surpassing Bowden’s number of preseason unranked seasons is just another sign he’s not equipped to lead such a historic program.
One way or another, this fifth unranked preseason at FSU better be his last. Either he turns it around, saves his job, and positions the Seminoles as a contender in 2027. Or he middles through another uninspiring campaign, and FSU’s administration finally has the stomach to eat his $50+ million buyout.
You would think passing Bowden in the record book would be a good thing, but records for inadequacy seem to be the only ones Norvell is capable of setting.
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