Mike Farrell Sports

College Football Recruiting, Opinion, and Analysis

Numerous Name Brands Limp Home for Fork in the Road Offseasons

Several name-brand programs must spend the offseason changing the narrative after poor finishes.

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Florida State Seminoles head coach Mike Norvell takes a second to soak in the moment. The Florida State Seminoles defeated the Louisville Cardinals 16-6 to claim the ACC Championship title in Charlotte
Florida State Seminoles head coach Mike Norvell takes a second to soak in the moment. The Florida State Seminoles defeated the Louisville Cardinals 16-6 to claim the ACC Championship title in Charlotte

By Rock Westfall

My, What a Difference a Month Makes 

As December broke, the Florida State Seminoles seemed to be all future. Instead, they begin the 2024 offseason as a mere shell of their former selves. Florida State’s problems are emblematic of an Atlantic Coast Conference that has lost credibility. 

The Miami Hurricanes and North Carolina Tar Heels join FSU as ACC programs that limped home to uncertain futures. 

From the Big Ten, the Ohio State Buckeyes and Penn State Nittany Lions have big brands but little in the way of recent championship success or reason to believe that will change.  

While in the SEC, the Oklahoma Sooners arrive from the weaker Big 12 with plenty of questions about their long-term viability and a rookie QB.

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Flailing Florida State’s Credibility Gap

As this space mentioned last month, the Atlantic Coast Conference is nothing more than a maximum security prison. Previous commissioner John Swofford handcuffed the ACC teams with a TV contract that fails to keep pace with the Big Ten and SEC while handcuffing its teams through 2036. After huffing and puffing for a couple of years, the defending league champion Florida State Seminoles announced they are taking legal action in an attempt to bust out.

Florida State finished 13-0 but was left out of the College Football Playoff. The CFP committee used the injury to FSU QB Jordan Travis as the perfect excuse to exclude the Seminoles in favor of the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Following the news that they were left out in the cold, Florida State saw a mass exodus of key players who opted or transferred out. The Seminoles’ season ended in a 63-3 Orange Bowl loss to the Georgia Bulldogs. In one month, head coach Mike Norvell saw his team go from a serious national contender to a helpless farce.

Indeed, the Noles limped back to Tallahassee as a program on the brink. Former Clemson and Oregon State QB DJ Uiagalelei is transferring in, but just how much of an impact can he make? Norvell faces the prospect of a full rebuild, with his current shell of a roster unrecognizable just one month ago.

Florida State’s legal action against the ACC further serves negative recruiting. SEC and Big Ten coaches can correctly state that the ACC is at a competitive disadvantage and that Florida State is likely trapped in the league for the next several years. Why would top players go to a school that can’t get CFP respect at 13-0 when they can go to SEC and Big Ten schools that will get the benefit of the doubt with lesser marks?

Mike Norvell did a spectacular job rebuilding Florida State out of ashes. But forces out of his control turned it back into a wasteland. How can Norvell and FSU possibly recover? This is an offseason that demands a furious blitz of new personnel to change the narrative. Yet, that is easier said than done. Florida State could be crippled for the foreseeable future.

Carolina Blues 

Another ACC program in free fall is coach Mack Brown’s North Carolina Tar Heels. Following a 6-0 start, there was playoff talk in Chapel Hill. However, Carolina limped home with a 2-5 finish, including a 30-10 loss to West Virginia in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.

Perhaps the biggest problem confronting Brown is his friendship with defensive coordinator Gene Chizik. Chizik admitted in 2022 that he did not do a good job coaching the defense. Things were not much better in 2023 as Chizik’s defense finished 98th overall and was reeling by season’s end.

Although he is a protected member of the college football media class, Chizik has proven to be a liability at UNC. But he goes way back with Brown, serving as his Texas DC from 2005-2006. Anyone else with Chizik’s UNC metrics would have been fired by now. But Brown refuses to pull the plug.

Like Florida State, North Carolina is stuck in a second-tier conference and will be recruiting against that narrative. Brown, age 72, will also face negative recruiting regarding his longevity. Brown faces the additional daunting task of replacing star QB Drake Maye, who has declared for the NFL Draft.

Since his Second Coming to the UNC sideline in 2019, Brown has gone 7-6, 8-4, 6-7, 9-5, and 8-5. He is the winningest coach in North Carolina history. His 2022 team made the ACC championship game, losing to Clemson 39-10. But he has only one Top 25 finish (18th, 2020), and his teams are notorious for folding in the late weeks of ACC play. Still, he is the gold standard of program history.

At the midway point of 2023, North Carolina was a piping hot commodity.  Since then, they have suffered a free fall of epic proportions with no sign of relief. North Carolina’s credibility as a serious ACC contender is nonexistent until proven otherwise. Mack Brown faces full-blast pressure, immediate demands, selling a discredited league, and uncertainty this offseason. It is his most important offseason in Carolina Blue.

A Hurricane of Discontent 

Miami-FL has half a coach in Mario Cristobal. The idiot savant produced the nation’s 6th-ranked recruiting class last month after finishing 8th in the 2022 class rankings. But his Hurricanes finished 7-5 after a 31-24 loss to Rutgers in the Pinstripe Bowl. Following a 5-7 maiden voyage in 2022, Cristobal is 12-13 in his two seasons at The U.

Miami is a place where fans will quickly move on from mediocre teams and find other things to do. While fans were thrilled about their favorite son coming home to save the program, the shine is off Cristobal. Too many self-inflicted losses to mediocre teams have driven away the fickle fan base of Miami. 

Furthermore, nobody wants to hear about losing to an improved Rutgers team.  At Miami, there is never any justification for losing to Rutgers, or Georgia Tech, for that matter. It’s a make the CFP or move on to many of South Florida’s other pro sports or other entertainment options proposition.

Starting QB Tyler Van Dyke transferred to Wisconsin. Van Dyke regressed this season, and it is not seen as a major loss. Still, Cristobal faces an offseason where he must find an immediate winning QB for what could be a make-or-break season in Coral Gables. 

Overall, there is no sense that 2024 will be a breakout season at The U. Cristobal faces his most critical offseason with the Canes. After two underwhelming seasons, he can’t hover around .500 anymore.

It’s Ryan Day’s Program Now

Ohio State fans are reeling after the Buckeyes’ pitiful performance in a 14-3 loss to the Missouri Tigers in the Cotton Bowl. With the transfer out of starting QB Kyle McCord, the most important position on a team facing its most important season under coach Ryan Day is up in the air. After three consecutive losses to that hated “Team Up North,” and with Michigan making the national championship game, Ryan Day’s quality of life is not much at all.

Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh is right in that Day was born on third base. He inherited a powerhouse program led by the greatest recruiter in college football, Urban Meyer, who posted a .902 career win percentage at Ohio State. In six seasons, Day has a win percentage of .875 with three College Football Playoff appearances, including the 2020 national championship game. Anywhere else, that would be grounds for a lifetime contract. But at Ohio State, it’s not even the standard.

Ohio State and Day must beat Michigan in 2024, at the very least. But to do that, the once heralded offensive guru had better find a legitimate championship QB immediately. And there is great debate and consternation as to where that QB will come from. Day enters the 2024 offseason with badly damaged credibility, facing increased skepticism, lost momentum, and no margin for error.

A Not so Happy Valley

Penn State head coach James Franklin is another case where, at most schools, he’d qualify for a statue. But at Penn State, fans have tired of his inability to get past top ten programs. The latest debacle was a 38-25 loss to the Ole Miss Rebels in the Peach Bowl. Franklin fell to 3-23 against Top 10 teams. After the game, he whined about the officials and “too many moving parts” working against his Nittany Lions team. That is not playing well at Penn State, where fans are tired of a lot of sizzle but little in actual steak.

Franklin peaked in his third season in Happy Valley, going 11-3 and winning the Big Ten championship. His overall win percentage of .693 is fourth best in school history. But his inability to beat Ohio State and Michigan sticks in the craw of the Penn State faithful.  And makes for an increasingly tougher sell on the recruiting and portal trail.  

Franklin’s recruiting classes are consistently in the Top 15 class. But he is seen as a coach who fails to develop all of that talent fully while having a revolving door at the offensive coordinator slot. Penn State pales in comparison to Michigan and Ohio State. And only beating those programs will change the increasingly negative narrative.

Sophomore Drew Allar is coming off his first season as a starting QB and had a promising 25/2 TD/INT ratio. But he and Franklin will be feeling the heat to deliver more in 2024. And there is nothing observers can point to indicating Top 10 success beckons.

Indeed, Franklin has seen his credibility gap grow exponentially. Penn State has reached the point where there is truly no substitute or substantive hope for a great leap forward.   

Sooner Schooner arrives at SEC Torn and Tattered 

At first glance, second-year coach Brent Venables and the Oklahoma Sooners had a nice improvement from 6-7 in 2022 to 10-3 this year. That included a 34-30 Red Red River Shootout win over the Texas Longhorns. But a deeper dive shows disappointing losses at Kansas (38-33) and at Oklahoma State (27-24). Finally, the Sooners were run off the field in the second half at the Alamo Bowl by Arizona, who won going away 38-24.

Most alarmingly, star QB Dillon Gabriel entered the transfer portal before the bowl game, ending up at Oregon, where he will replace Heisman Finalist Bo Nix. Venables did not fight to keep Gabriel, as he wanted to turn the roster over to younger players. Coach and QB parted on excellent terms.

Still, the Sooners now have an unstable QB picture heading into the offseason. Freshman Jackson Arnold got the start in the Alamo Bowl, throwing for 361 yards, two TDs, and three INTs in the game. He enters the offseason as #1 on the depth chart but will be pushed.

Yes, Venables stopped the bleeding in 2023. But OU now heads to the SEC, where it just means more, and there are no weeks off. Oklahoma fans won’t be interested in excuses or “needing time” to adjust to the deeper league. The pressure is on full blast for Venables and the proud Sooner program. But there are plenty of questions about OU’s realistic viability in the SEC with a rookie QB.

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