When it all goes wrong. Again.

Things are so bad at Florida State, the school appears on the brink of buying out Mike Norvell's contract, despite not having anything close to enough money to make the math work. How did we get here?

When the Jimbo Fisher era came to an end amid a brutal 2017 campaign, the reasons were obvious. Fisher had long abandoned basic tenets of accountability with his team. He had a terrible relationship with an administration led by an AD he hated and a booster group unwilling to fund projects he desired. It was a toxic situation that led to a disastrous season and, ultimately, his departure.

The Willie Taggart era was never going to succeed. Taggart was notoriously disorganized, had no real plan for things as simple as running practice, was disliked from the jump by a sizable portion of his fan base, and had a poor eye for talent -- both in terms of on the field and his staff.

That both of those situations at Florida State blew up was, in hindsight, inevitable.

Now that things have reached another new low under Mike Norvell, it’s notable to me that none of the aforementioned issues are true of the current situation at FSU.

The Noles are all in. They’ve spent money. They’ve upgraded facilities. They have a very good (if not entirely elite) NIL infrastructure.

There is alignment within the administration, with Michael Alford fighting like hell for the school, Norvell getting a massive contract extension in 2023, and a refreshing bit of patience as these Noles have tried to work through issues.

Norvell is well liked by his players, by parents, by folks inside the program. He’s largely surrounded himself by good coaches and, when last year went south, he made necessary changes and added big names to bolster his assistants.

He’d been brilliant in finding talent after the brutal Taggart era, bringing in the likes of Jermaine Johnson and Keon Coleman and Trey Benson and Jared Verse. He saw potential in Jordan Travis and built him up from a guy ready to quit football to one of the best players in the country.

He has a clear, organized and directed plan. Watch him run sprints before practice and it’s clear, he’s entirely invested in his team.

And yet, here we are, Florida State now losers of four straight including an unforgivable defeat at Stanford on Saturday, and while no change has yet come, it seems all but inevitable now.

A year ago, outsiders lauded FSU as a bastion of talent, arguably the best defensive front in the country, and it all fell off a cliff as the team lost early then cashed in its chips.

This year’s team is, on paper, probably less talented than last year’s, but good enough to beat Alabama, and, as Norvell prioritized this offseason, supposedly bought in and built to deal with adversity.

And yet. And yet. And yet.

FSU is now 5-15 in its last 20 games after a 19-game winning streak that spanned 2022 and 2023. The wins are against Bama, Cal, Kent State and two FCS schools. Bama is such a ridiculous outlier that game will be studied by coaches 100 years from now.

Fans want to move on, and that’s understandable, but not to sound too much like Mike Lombardi, it’s worth asking: How did it go so wrong?

With Fisher, the -- pardon the wording -- fissures were clear.

With Taggart, the flaws were obvious.

With Norvell, it should have worked. Heck, it DID work. And then, suddenly, the guy who had his team on the brink of the College Football Playoff, completely lost control of the team.

Is it as simple as blaming the committee’s snub in 2023 for what’s happened since? Is a coaching change necessary just to exorcise the demons? That feels like way too simple an excuse.

In full transparency, I genuinely like Mike Norvell. I think he’s a good person, a good coach, a stand-up guy. I want this to work. But there is no universe, even amid all the changes in college football, in which this program should go 13 months without an ACC win. There is no reality in which THAT Stanford team -- without a half-dozen starters on what was already the most talent-deprived team in the league -- should beat Florida State.

There are red flags, of course. We all knew the DJU experiment was a huge risk (and I can’t help but wonder how differently things might’ve gone if they’d just ponied up for Cam Ward). I was dubious of the investment in Tommy Castellanos from Day 1, too, and while I think he did give the team some needed confidence, he’s just not a good enough passer to win at a high level. And if there’s a through line from Fisher’s apex to Taggart to Norvell’s downfall, it’s the lack of anything resembling good QB play, save the Travis era.

But it can’t be all on one position. The lack of a QB isn’t why the O-line couldn’t block at all last year, despite returning so many players from 2023. The lack of a QB doesn’t explain a guy jumping offsides on Saturday night when every person in the stadium knew Stanford wasn’t going to snap the ball. The lack of QB talent might be the difference between 13-0 and 8-4, but it cannot explain 5-15.

So what is it? Norvell didn’t forget how to coach. Tony White was a rising star at Syracuse and Nebraska. Gus Malzahn has been doing this for decades. He knows his stuff. This isn’t the ACC’s best roster, but it’s light years ahead of Stanford.

How, how, how have we gotten here?

I truly don’t know the answer to that question, but as we see teams move on from other coaches who’d had success before and spend big money to do so, it is worth a full autopsy on what led FSU to this dark place.

Because the Noles have now had three coaches they ostensibly believed in, two of which won conference titles, and it’s gone bad every time.

The problem with the process cannot just be Mike Norvell. And spending close to $100 million to fire a coach, his staff, and hire someone new isn’t something worth doing if you aren’t even sure what problem you’re trying to solve.

Wild times in the SEC

In this week’s Game Day Final, I dug into the SEC’s new topsy-turvy world where Georgia feels like the plucky upstart, Vanderbilt is dealing power punches, and a team that lost to Florida State is the hottest program in the conference.

For so long, there was an obvious hierarchy in the SEC. The names might change, but inevitably, there were a pair of titans and a few challengers to the throne, and by year’s end, the battles yielded enough clarity to showcase the league’s overwhelming strength.

In 2025, the story is different.

Vanderbilt is a playoff contender. Georgia is the defiant upstart. Alabama is the wobbly giant. Texas A&M boosters are making back some of Jimbo Fisher’s buyout by betting the over.

It doesn’t make much sense, but that’s a sign of the times. This season was never intended to fit a script, and for all its boisterous aggrandizements, the SEC isn’t immune to the chaos of 2025.

But, perhaps that’s a good thing. SEC games might always mean more, but for too long, they’ve delivered less surprise, less fun, less of what makes this sport so routinely weird.

Finally, the SEC’s catching up -- or being dragged back down -- with everyone else.

Do we buy Texas A&M, in spite of a botched PAT being the only reason they beat Notre Dame? Do we buy Alabama, a team that cannot run the ball at all? Do we buy Georgia, a team that could as easily have three losses as it is 6-1?

This year is unlike any we’ve seen before, and in the SEC, that’s a particularly interesting development. But I think the first order of business is adjusting our expectations of what “great” looks like because, in 2025, that old image simply doesn’t exist anymore.

Mensah’s elite

The Georgia Tech-Duke game was a fun one, and Duke will be kicking itself for letting it get away from them. Duke’s turnovers have cost the Blue Devils at least two games now, in my opinion, but none of that should take away from just how good Darian Mensah has been. On Saturday, he threw for 373 yards and two touchdowns. Mensah now has thrown for 2,211 yards, 17 touchdowns, 2 picks and is completing 70% of his passes. He’s the only QB in the country to hit all those benchmarks, and the list of others who’ve done it in the playoff era for a Power Five school isn’t long: Kenny Pickett and Baker Mayfield. Both were Heisman finalists that year.

Anyway, I sat down with Mensah to talk about his journey for The Huddle last week. Here’s the full piece if you’re interested.

This week on Inside ACCess

The show’s back Thursday at 5 p.m. on ACCN. We’ll be joined by Wake head coach Jake Dickert, FSU tastemaker Jeff Cameron, and Andrea and I will dig into the details on Wake-SMU, NC State-Pitt and Virginia-UNC.

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast version of the show. Please and thank you.

Week 8 rankings

Here’s my ballot for this week’s ESPN power rankings, where I think folks have gone way overboard in knocking Miami for its loss, and where I think people need to start paying attention to JMU.

And here are my GNR tiers for the ACC.

Of note, Slash walking out of the church into the desert to wail on the guitar is among the most badass moments of any MTV-era video.