Florida State has already started the reset.
On Monday, the Seminoles fired athletic director Michael Alford after four years, and that move has only sharpened the sense that more change is coming. Whether it happens after Saturday night’s likely loss to Alabama or later, once a new athletic director is in place, Mike Norvell looks like a coach headed for the exit too.
If Florida State does move on, the next question is obvious: who gets the call?
The person making that hire isn’t in Tallahassee yet, but the early list should be taking shape. And it ought to include a mix of rising head coaches, proven coordinators and a few names with Florida ties.
One possibility is Charles Huff, though there’s a real risk the fan base would reject the idea simply because he comes from Memphis, the same school Florida State used as a launching point for Norvell. That would be bad process.
If Huff is the right coach, the school shouldn’t care where he’s coming from. Still, there’s a second layer to it: Memphis has FedEx money and a spending edge in the American, so unless a coach is absolutely overwhelming the league and reaching the College Football Playoff, success there can be hard to trust.
If Florida State wants to look at coordinators, Indiana defensive coordinator Bryant Haines deserves a long look. He won the Broyles Award last year and is widely regarded as one of the best defensive minds in the country. Blake Baker belongs near the top of that same conversation, and Florida State could decide to give a first-time head coach like him a shot, the way Cal and Kentucky did last offseason with highly regarded assistants from Oregon.
It’s difficult to picture Baker not landing a head coaching job somewhere this offseason, unless he simply wants to stay with Lane Kiffin at LSU.
Another coordinator worth watching is Shannon Dawson at Miami. He built an elite power-spread offense around Cam Ward in 2024, then dialed back the air-raid ideas in 2025 to better fit Carson Beck’s strengths, and now he’s opened things back up with Darian Mensah. That kind of flexibility matters, and so does the fact that Dawson has learned how to help build a Florida program back into a powerhouse under Mario Cristobal.
Then there’s Mario Diaz, who would be a tricky hire emotionally because he’s a Florida State alum and previously coached at Miami. But the argument for him is straightforward: he has clearly grown as a head coach, and with better support around him, the roster issues that followed him in Coral Gables could be less of a problem. He might also come cheaper than some of the bigger names, which matters in the NIL era when that extra $2-3 million can be redirected to the roster.
Florida State should also at least make the call on the coach who beat the Seminoles in Week 1 and turned SMU into a perennial ACC contender. SMU has spent enough to reach the top of the league, but Tallahassee still offers a higher ceiling. That alone could make the job attractive to an offensive-minded coach in a strong situation in Dallas.
And then there’s Kenny Dillingham.
He passed on Michigan this offseason to stay at Arizona State, so a move to Florida State feels unlikely on the surface. But that decision seemed tied to family, with Dillingham choosing to stay in his home state instead of heading to Ann Arbor.
A return to a familiar place like Florida State, where he was offensive coordinator in 2020-21, might feel different. Even now, the Seminoles would probably give him a better path back to the College Football Playoff than Arizona State, which appears to have hit a ceiling because of its lack of resources.
In Other News...
Mike Norvell Faces An Awkward Alabama Week Distraction
Florida State is heading into one of its biggest tests of the season with an off-field change hanging over the program. The school has fired Michael Alford, its vice president and director of athletics, and Mike Norvell is scheduled to speak with reporters about the leadership shift while also turning his attention to No. 10 Alabama.
The timing is hardly ideal for a Seminoles team coming off a bye week and sitting at 1-1, with a trip to Bryant-Denny Stadium next on the calendar. Norvell will be asked to navigate both the immediate challenge on the field and the uncertainty that comes with the athletic department shake-up, another layer of noise before Florida State faces a major early-season measuring stick. [Read more 🡒]
Florida State Just Turned Up The Pressure On Mike Norvell
Florida State has made a major leadership change by firing Vice President and Director of Athletics Michael Alford after four years on the job, a move that lands at a sensitive moment for a program already dealing with pressure on the football side. The university said the decision is part of a broader restructuring effort, and the timing makes clear this is about more than one department or one season.
For Mike Norvell, the ripple effects could be immediate. Recent poor performance and financial concerns have already complicated the outlook around the Seminoles, and now the administration is signaling that it wants a different path forward in how the athletic department is run. With the president and board framing the move as an effort to restore competitiveness, the expectations around Florida State's football future only got heavier. [Read more 🡒]
Florida State Turns To An Insider For A Crucial Athletic Department Reset
Bruce Warwick is now the face of Florida States athletic department transition after being named interim athletic director in the wake of Michael Alfords firing. Warwick has been part of the Seminoles staff since 2019, working as senior associate athletics director for football, and the move keeps the department in the hands of someone already familiar with its people, priorities and pressure points.
For Florida State, the choice suggests a reset built around continuity as much as change, with Warwick taking over day-to-day operations while the university figures out its next long-term step. His rsum stretches well beyond Tallahassee, with stops in the NFL and at several major college programs, including the Rams, Tennessee, Duke, the Packers, Syracuse, Maryland and Clemson, giving the Seminoles an experienced insider to steady things during an important stretch. [Read more 🡒]