Florida State fired Mike Norvell and the athletic department, in the midst of rebuilding after a shocking fall from grace following an undefeated regular season three years ago, began searching for a new head coach.
Many candidates will be interested in taking over one of the crown jewels of the CAC, but who? Money will be a question. So will the attractiveness of the situation within the athletic department. The school fired athletic director Mike Alford in September and does not yet have a permanent boss.
But everyone knows you can win big in Tallahassee. Norvell won 19 straight games in 2022 and 2023, went 13-0 in the 2023 regular season and was the first undefeated Power Five champion to be left out of the College Football Playoff. Florida State has gone 10-23 in the ensuing 33 games, including 4-17 in the ACC since the start of 2024. They have lost 12 straight road games, tied for the longest streak in school history.
The massive changes coming to FSU won’t come cheap. The program has also spent a lot of money in recent years and is heavily in debt after building and renovating football facilities.
Buyouts for Norvell and assistant coaches could eclipse $65 million. Norvell is owed between $47.1 million and $50.3 million, which would be the third-largest buyout in college football history, but that could be offset by the salary Norvell will earn at his next job.
Then there’s the cost of hiring a new head coach and staff.
FSU closed the 2025 fiscal year with $437 million in athletics-related debt, up from $237 million a year earlier. Most of the debt is tied to bonds for renovations to Doak Campbell Stadium and a new football operations building.
All of this will determine who Florida State hires next to take over a program that seems lost in the shuffle of an evolving ACC, where Miami has become the superpower over the past two years as NIL spending soared.
CBS Sports spoke with industry sources and came up with a list of seven candidates that make sense for the Seminoles.
Duke head coach Manny Diaz
Manny Diaz began his coaching career in Tallahassee, breaking into the business as a graduate assistant under Bobby Bowden and longtime defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews. He’s now one of the hottest names in sports, pushing Duke to bowl eligibility for a third straight season after winning the ACC Championship Game in 2025. Diaz is 24-11 in Durham, which is impressive in its own right, but how much will his previous stint in Miami hurt his candidacy?
Miami fired Diaz in December 2021 after posting a 21-15 record over three seasons. They hired Mario Cristobal, who has since led the Hurricanes to the national championship game and first place.
Diaz knows the ACC, Florida State and Florida State Standards from the inside out. He grew up in Miami, where his father was mayor, and his recruiting roots in South Florida run deep. Duke signed Diaz to an extension in April. Could the die-hard FSU faithful look past his days in Miami and hire him to lead the program?
Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri head coach
Eli Drinkwitz is 64-32 as an FBS head coach, including a 12-1 season at Appalachian State and an 11-2 season at Missouri in 2023 that ended with a Cotton Bowl victory over Ohio State. Missouri is ranked again this season, with a huge showdown against Texas on Saturday that will have playoff implications.
He signed a six-year contract in December averaging $10.75 million through 2031, but that won’t stop FSU. Drinkwitz would only owe Missouri $5 million if he left before Dec. 1, and $4 million after that.
Drinkwitz has a clear vision for building a roster, mixing portal additions like Ole Miss quarterback Austin Simmons with players developed in the program, and that’s precisely where Norvell failed. He also has ACC experience from his time at NC State. His teams win the games they are supposed to win, unlike Norvell’s days at FSU. Missouri’s win Saturday against Arkansas was its 29th straight against an unranked opponent, tied for the longest active streak in the FBS.
The question is whether Florida State can match a $10 million salary after committing $50 million to the last coach, and whether Drinkwitz can win the big games, something he struggled to do at Mizzou. Despite his excellent overall record, he is 3-10 against AP Top 25 teams since 2024, including a 1-2 record so far this fall.
Jake Dickert, Wake Forest head coach
Wake Forest is the story no one is talking about, but the Demon Deacons are 7-1 and in sole possession of second place in the ACC. Dickert is 16-5 in two seasons at a school picked to finish second-to-last in the league before his debut. His first team went 9-4, the most wins by a first-year coach in program history.
Dickert’s approach to roster building worked at Wake Forest, so why wouldn’t that translate to FSU? Bringing in general manager Rob Schlaeger would be a huge win for the Seminoles. FSU fans will also be happy to know that Wake Forest is playing a physical brand that they lost in scrimmage under Norvell. Virginia ran for just 16 yards in the Demon Deacons’ 51-7 win Saturday, and the Deacons rank sixth nationally in run defense (82.9 yards per game).
But Dickert’s contract could complicate things. Wake Forest assistant coaches have a non-compete clause in their contracts that prohibits them from accepting another job in the ACC for at least a year after their employment ends, sources told CBS Sports. The question is whether a similar clause is included in the head coach’s contract. If Dickert has similar language in his contract, that could take him off the table at Florida State.
Wake Forest is a private school, so coaches’ contracts are not available through open records requests. The school announced a new “long-term contract” with Dickert in December but did not reveal details, including salary.
Dickert, 43, is from Wisconsin and has no ties to Florida. He had no ties to Washington State or Wake Forest either, and won in both cases.
Kenny Dillingham, Arizona State head coach
Kenny Dillingham was Norvell’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Florida State in 2020 and 2021, the first two years of the rebuild, after serving in the same role for Norvell at Memphis in 2018.
Dillingham took over his alma mater in 2023, went 3-9, then won the Big 12 and reached the College Football Playoff in 2024. Arizona State has cooled off since then, but the Sun Devils pushed BYU to the brink last week. The Sun Devils are 4-4 and Dillingham is 26-21 overall. Rumors that Michigan would pursue him led to a new five-year deal averaging $7.5 million per year.
Dillingham brings an offensive mind and a fresh approach. He seems frustrated at times at ASU and has publicly said he wants more financial muscle behind his program. He coaches his hometown school and his close relationship with Norvell could complicate any conversation.
Jason Eck, New Mexico head coach
Jason Eck is the hottest name at the Group of Six level. He is 16-5 over the last two seasons at New Mexico and his defense leads the nation, allowing just 11.9 points per game.
Eck’s gregarious personality would be a hit in Tallahassee. He is also a builder. He was an offensive lineman under Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin, and when he became head coach at Idaho, he led the program to the FCS playoffs in all three seasons. He has 42-18 years as a college head coach.
Florida State’s offensive line never looked consistent under Norvell. Eck’s teams will be based on the offensive and defensive lines. FSU may want a proven coach, and Eck has no experience leading a power conference program. It also has no connection to the Southeast.
Blake Baker, LSU defensive coordinator
The nation’s highest-paid assistant coach turned down feelers from Tulane and Memphis last December to stay at LSU. Florida State could be the job that excites him.
Baker fixed defenses everywhere he went. At LSU, he took a defense that ranked 81st nationally before his arrival and held opponents to 18.3 points per game in 2025, the program’s best mark since 2016. He was defensive coordinator at Louisiana Tech from 2015 to 2018, at Miami under Diaz in 2019 and 2020, and at Missouri under Drinkwitz in 2022 and 2023, when the Tigers went 11-2 and held Ohio State without a touchdown in the Cotton Bowl.
His two seasons at Miami allowed him to establish recruiting connections in South Florida, and he recruited in the Southeast the last four years at Missouri and LSU.
Glenn Schumann, Georgia defensive coordinator
Schumann was born in Valdosta, Georgia, less than 100 miles from Tallahassee. His grandfather, Jack Haskin, coached at Florida State and is in the school’s Hall of Fame.
Schumann, 36, spent his entire career at two of the sport’s elite programs as a graduate assistant under Nick Saban at Alabama before following Kirby Smart to Georgia in 2016. He was co-defensive coordinator on Georgia’s back-to-back national teams in 2021 and 2022, and no assistant has been with Smart longer. He is also considered one of the best recruiters in the country. Schumann interviewed for the job at North Carolina before the Tar Heels hired Bill Belichick two years ago.
It ticks the regional and recruitment boxes. The risk is that he has never been a head coach. Georgia’s defense is still among the best in the country, although it struggled to pressure the quarterback last season with just 20 sacks to rank 117th. The Bulldogs are now back in the top 10, averaging over three sacks per game.
Wildcards
A few other wild cards include SMU’s Rhett Lashlee and former Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher. Lashlee is well compensated at SMU and his NIL coffers are among the richest in the conference, so pulling him out of Dallas for any job could be difficult. He also signed a new contract last December.
Fisher’s name immediately draws antennas, of course. He left FSU with an 83-23 record and a national championship in December 2016 to take over at Texas A&M, where administrators all but promised Aggie fans a national title, and he never came close. He was fired in 2023 with a 45-25 record. Still, some promoters in Tallahassee are intrigued by the idea of bringing in Fisher, perhaps at a discount, to rebuild a program he knows intimately. He also still has a home in Tallahassee.
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