Florida State enters the season without a spot in the AP preseason Top 25, and that absence says plenty about where the program stands with voters right now. The Seminoles have been left off the preseason rankings in five of Mike Norvell’s seven years in Tallahassee, and after back-to-back rough seasons, that omission has become a familiar story.
The numbers behind that slide are hard to ignore. Florida State is 7-17 overall and 3-13 in ACC play over the last two seasons, a stretch that has drained plenty of the goodwill the program once carried.
Former Nole Bryant McFadden put it bluntly: “There's no respect associated with Florida State football anymore,” former Nole Bryant McFadden said. “The respect that was once there as a perennial contender in ACC conversations is no longer there.”
If Florida State wanted to force its way back into the conversation, the offseason needed to be special. It wasn’t. The Seminoles’ transfer portal class checked in at No. 28 nationally, according to 247Sports, which left little reason to expect a preseason leap from the AP voters.
Still, the schedule gives Florida State a chance to change the narrative in a hurry. The Seminoles will face four ranked opponents, including three ACC teams that landed in the AP Top 25: No.
7 Miami, No. 19 SMU and No.
24 Louisville. Florida State opens ACC play on Sep. 7 against SMU, travels to Louisville on Oct. 9, and then heads to Miami on Oct.
The non-conference slate brings another major test. Florida State plays No.
13 Alabama on Sep. 19, meaning two of its first three games come against ranked opponents. That should give voters a quick read on whether leaving the Seminoles out was the right call.
And if the preseason ranking itself doesn’t tell the whole story, history does. Being in the AP Top 25 has never been a guarantee of anything. In 22 of the last 23 seasons, at least one preseason Top 10 team finished unranked; the only exception was 2019.
Norvell has already lived that lesson. Florida State opened the 2024 season at No. 10 and still ended up unranked after winning just two games.
In Other News...
Florida States Backfield Just Earned Respect Now Comes The Hard Part
Florida States backfield got a notable nod this week when Ousmane Kromah and Quintrevion Wisner were both named to the 2026 Doak Walker Award watch list. Its a small piece of preseason recognition, but it says plenty about how the Seminoles running game is viewed heading into the fall, especially with Florida State joining a short list of programs nationally to place multiple backs on the watch list and standing as one of only two ACC teams to do it.
Kromah and Wisner have each built enough of a track record to draw attention, and now comes the tougher part: turning that respect into production once the games count. The watch list honors are nice, but for Florida State the real question is whether this tandem can match the hype, carry the offense when needed and give the Seminoles a ground game that can hold up against the better defenses on the schedule. [Read more 🡒]
Florida States Biggest 2026 Question Is All About Where The Money Went
Florida State kept Mike Norvell in place for a seventh season, even as the conversation around the program has shifted from coaching stability to whether the investment around him is being allocated the right way. The Seminoles poured more than $20 million into the roster, with a clear emphasis on skill positions, and the expectation in Tallahassee was that an aggressive offseason would help reset the programs trajectory.
The question now is whether the most important spot on the field got enough of that attention. The Athletics offseason quarterback rankings suggested Florida State may not have landed at the same level at quarterback as some of its other additions, leaving Ashton Daniels in a less favorable tier than several of the passers brought in elsewhere. For a program trying to justify both its spending and its direction, that is the kind of mismatch that can loom over an entire season. [Read more 🡒]