Florida State has spent the last year and a half-plus staggering in a daze, winning all of two games since December 2023 and generally wondering how everything went so wrong so fast. From national championship hopeful to national joke, Florida State’s fall since the 2023 ACC championship game has been remarkable — and, if you’re a Nole, devastating — to behold.
Saturday afternoon in Tallahassee, the Seminoles get a chance to right a whole lot of wrongs — or, at least, to heal a lot of psychic damage — when they face the Alabama Crimson Tide. Because Alabama, you see, has quietly but definitely broken Florida State’s brain.
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The last time these two teams met — eight years ago almost to the day — Alabama stomped then-No. 3 Florida State 24-7 in the 2017 season opener, and marched right on to yet another national championship. FSU ended up going a mediocre 7-6, and Jimbo Fisher left the team after the season.
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It’s all part of a longstanding tradition. Back in the Bear Bryant and Nick Saban days, Alabama left a nationwide slate of programs and fan bases deranged with anger, and put entire generations of coaches out of jobs. Pick a major university — and every single SEC squad — and you can see the size-15 cleatprints of Alabama on their chest.
In a strange way, the 2020s version of Florida State represents the last in that line of shattered fanbases, because Florida State is the last opponent Nick Saban broke. Consider two elements:
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• Alabama was the fourth and final team admitted to the final four-team playoff in 2023, leaving Florida State out in the cold even after an undefeated season and an ACC championship. (We don’t need to re-litigate the fact that Texas should have been bounced, not the Seminoles. The point remains: Alabama in, FSU out.)
• After Nick Saban retired, Florida State head coach Mike Norvell’s name was one of many bandied about as a replacement. Norvell and his agent parlayed that into a nifty eight-year, $10-million-per extension. It seemed like the right deal at the time, although since then, Florida State has paid $5 million per Norvell win.
So you can see why Florida State and its fans might be a bit sideways about Alabama, even if nobody else is at the moment. And you can also see why a win over No. 8 Alabama would go a long way toward erasing the sting of that woeful 2-10 record in 2024.
Florida State paid a boatload to keep Mike Norvell from jumping ship to Alabama. Saturday, Norvell has an opportunity to show Seminole fans he’s still the right man in Tallahassee.
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Norvell referenced the up-and-way-down last few years earlier this week, trying to put some distance between both the good and the bad: “At the end of the day, this is the 2025 Florida State football team. The 19 wins in a row from ’22 and ’23 is not going to win a game for us this fall. The disappointing season for what last year was is not going to lose us a game this fall, it’s not going to win us a game either,” he said. “It’s what we do in the moment with the opportunity that’s there.”
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Pretty much everyone outside of Norvell and Chief Osceola is new in Tallahassee this season. Florida State has 49 new players on the roster, plus new offensive and defensive coordinators in Gus Malzahn and Tony White, respectively, along with their associated new staffs. (White had the quote of the preseason earlier this month when he assessed his defense: “There are some guys who need to, quite frankly, step their ass up.”)
The whole Florida State team is going to need to step its ass up if it hopes to run with Alabama. Although Saban is long gone and the Tide are bringing in a new quarterback, Alabama is still a two-touchdown favorite, with a receiving corps that will test Florida State’s secondary. Plus, FSU quarterback Tommy Castellanos spent this summer poking the bear that is the entire Alabama defense, and the Tide is eager to rectify the disrespect.
Still, there aren’t many programs that can get halfway to last season’s win total on Saturday. And if that win comes at Alabama’s expense, well, the Seminoles can finally put the nightmarish last year-plus behind them.
This news was originally published on this post .
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