It's money 100%. They, under Norvell, have not been getting who they want. They have been getting who they can afford, and is why they are finishing ranked 15 to 25, which they are on track for this year again. They are currently 9 with a large class, but all of Bama, Michigan, Texas, LSU, Florida, Tennessee, Oregon, and Oklahoma, who are ranked below them will finish ahead of them. They couldn't pull their top prospects, so they went on a spending spree of plan B's and inflated their ranking. The schools with more money are going to be getting the higher rated holdouts who want more money and flipping those who become great players this year from the lower ranked schools who have less money. It's too early to see where FSU's class lands, but it won't be great, and is far below what it would have been in the old pre-NIL era, regardless of having a toxic coach.
Yeah me too. As a 13 year old I was living at Tyndall AFB in Panama City and had mustard & ketchup colored pendants and stuff on the walls of my bedroom. It didn’t hurt that this tall lanky dude named Fred Biletnikoff was catching passes for the semis back then. Fortunately my dad retired from the USAF and moved the family to Ft. Lauderdale and that broke the panhandle connection with SWAC. From there I became a Gator. (trivia question - without googling it, can anybody name the QB who threw to Biletnikoff?)
Well OK, they may have a “big fan base”, but they sure don’t have a passionate big fan base. Hell, they end up having a 1/4 to half filled stadium for multiple home games every year; never travel to fill up their away game’s stadiums.
Winning games helps and they have been mostly bad for a decade. We are dangerously close to many losing interest also.
Im sure that doesnt help their feelers too much. They are pathetic at the moment and we are average in the sec.
I know history doesn’t matter much to kids being recruited these days, but FSU did have a mystique back in the day. Kids used to think they were cool, liked the helmet, big party school, etc. A lot of that has dissipated but I think some of it still exists. FSU still sucks though.
I imagine a lot of their fans stay away because of that warchant. How would you like to sit in the middle of it?
Glad you found your way over from the dark side before it was too late, Skink. And, no, I'm not sure who threw to Biletnikoff at the college level.
Steve Tensi it was! Great recall APK. Interesting I never recalled where he went after college - only Fred
I was in elementary school in Tallahassee around that time and another FSU QB, Gary Pajcic’s wife was a student intern at my school. He came by one day and everyone was excited. I also remember as a kid everyone playing backyard football wanted to be Fred Biletnikoff and would always jump to catch a ball even if it was a low throw just to mimic him.
