Prominent talking head points out Florida State might be in worse shape than thought

Florida State football has gone 7-17 over the past two seasons under Mike Norvell, a far cry from the 23-4 mark in the two seasons before that. FSU looked on track to rebound last season after a huge upset over Alabama in the season opener.

They started the season 3-0 before losing the next four. They never made it to the six-win mark to become bowl eligible against a relatively weak schedule. Stanford, Clemson, NC State, and Florida were all bad to mediocre at best, and FSU went 0-4 in that stretch to finish 5-7.

Florida State decided not to fire Mike Norvell, although the fans nearly reached a boiling point for it to happen. A by-product of that decision was the inability to bring in top transfer portal players who could help turn the program around. Talking head Josh Pate brought up a concerning point on a recent show:

Florida State would be even worse if they played in the SEC or B1G?

Oddsmakers think Florida State will win fewer than seven games in 2026, while playing an eight-game ACC schedule. If you bet $100 for them to win seven or more games, you’d win $130. Josh Pate asked oddsmakers what the projected win total would be for Florida State if they played the Florida Gators' schedule in the SEC, and that number changed to 4.5.  

Florida State has won THREE ACC games over the past two years. If FSU were in the SEC, they might not have won one, well, they beat Alabama though!

So, really, FSU is worse than we all think because they play some bad teams in the ACC? Don’t get me wrong, because the SEC has some scrub teams, too. However, if you look at Florida’s schedule, FSU would likely be betting underdogs against most of those teams.

FSU will play Alabama and Florida in 2026, so we'll have a real idea of how they stack up against SEC teams. If those games get ugly, the oddsmakers would probably be right.

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