On paper, Mike Norvell’s hire in Tallahassee this offseason made a ton of sense.

Norvell’s Memphis program was consistently one of the better Group of 5 programs in recent years and improved under his leadership after Justin Fuente left the Tigers for Virginia Tech.

Norvell has also shown an outstanding ability to surround himself with quality assistant coaches during his head coaching tenure.

Despite having his coaching staff being raided annually by SEC and ACC programs, and Notre Dame for that matter, Norvell managed to keep on winning at Memphis. After landing the FSU job, several of the assistants Norvell lost to better programs decided to rejoin him in Tallahassee.

While those signs point toward FSU being in good hands, the fiasco caused by an ill-worded statement from Norvell blew up on him recently and caused one of the team captains in Tallahassee to call for a boycott of Norvell’s program.

That situation in Tallahassee was diffused quickly but if the buy-in factor has been affected at all by that incident, it could cost Norvell his job based on the comments from an anonymous opposing coach in the new Athlon Sports College Football Preview Magazine for the 2020 season.

The way this unnamed coach sees things, FSU isn’t going to give Norvell long to show some progress on the field after the disastrous end of Jimbo Fisher’s tenure at FSU and the continued downside of the Seminole program under Willie Taggart:

“Everyone knew that Jimbo (Fisher) took the last years off in recruiting, but it’s Florida State. You can only screw that place up so much and not be able to beat two-thirds of this conference… The downside could come in attrition. (Willie) Taggart got a reputation for bringing in attitude guys. So now you’re going to see some of those guys pushed out… Mike should get two years, but he might not even get that. They’re desperate to win again. They want to show that they’re not headed down that steady decline like Miami.”

Taggart couldn’t manage to stick around long enough to see the end of Year 2 in Tallahassee and these comments suggest Norvell better not struggle if he has plans to remain in Tallahassee long enough to see Year 3 of his tenure.

If you haven’t had the chance to buy your copy of the 2020 Athlon Sports College Football Preview Magazine, they can be purchased in stores now as well as online at the Athlon Sports online store.