Forde-Yard Dash: The Plight of the Florida Man

Each week, The Dash will identify 12 people dealing with damaged College Football Playoff hopes, and gauge their teams’ chances of rebounding from calamity.

Florida State head coach Mike Norvell and the Seminoles / Melina Myers-Imagn Images

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football, where it’s almost firing season already:

First Quarter: Twelve Angry Men 

The 12-team College Football Playoff is a wellspring of hope and excitement for dozens of fan bases. But as the losses accrue, it also will be a source of discontent for fan bases that see their chances slipping away. Each week, The Dash will identify 12 people dealing with damaged playoff hopes, and gauge their teams’ chances of rebounding from calamity.

Florida Man (1). Forget the usual tropes about drug busts and alligator hijinks. Florida Man has taken his unique, internationally known brand of dysfunction to the football field in spectacular fashion this fall. North of Miami, it’s an uncontained tire fire of incompetence.

The anger starts with Central Florida Man (2). His Florida Gators were pushed around again in The Swamp, following the season-opening embarrassment against the Miami Hurricanes with a thorough beating from the Texas A&M Aggies. Florida’s seventh straight loss to an FBS opponent came courtesy of a backup A&M quarterback who was making his first college start. It got so bad that, at one point, the Aggies drove 99 yards for a touchdown without completing a single pass to make it 20–0. Fun times in The Swamp.

That dropped Billy Napier’s record to 12–16, all but finishing what will go down as one of the worst head-coaching tenures in school history. When the end officially comes is unclear as of Sunday morning, though conventional wisdom suggests a week from now after Florida faces fellow SEC football incompetent Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss. That’s followed by an open date, which would allow the program some time to reorganize itself around interim leadership.

Napier’s nadir reinforces one truth about Florida football in the post-Urban Meyer era: When it goes sideways, it goes way sideways. And fast.

Will Muschamp was 20–9 through his first two-plus seasons, then lost seven straight in 2013 and shouldn’t even have been brought back to be fired late in the ’14 season. Jim McElwain went 19–8 in his first two seasons, winning the SEC East Division both times, then was gone after a 3–4 start to his third year. Dan Mullen had top-10 teams in ’18 and ’19, and started the ’20 season 8–1 before a player threw a shoe against the LSU Tigers and turned everything around—he lost nine of his last 16 games and was fired before the end of the ’21 season.

Poor Napier hasn’t even hit any high points like his immediate predecessors. It’s been bad from the start.

Florida’s chances of making the playoff: zero point zero.

And there is the Panhandle Florida Man (3). Speaking of things going to hell in a hurry, Panhandle Florida Man’s Florida State Seminoles have completely cratered since Selection Sunday 2023. The Noles are winless since then, in increasingly humiliating fashion: a bowl blowout against the Georgia Bulldogs when half of the roster opted out; a ’24 season-opening upset in Ireland against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets; a home shocker against the Boston College Eagles on Labor Day; and then the 20–12 loss to the Memphis Tigers on Saturday.

Florida State has played 120 minutes in Doak Campbell Stadium this season and led for none of them.

People expecting Mike Norvell to get the Napier treatment and be trap-doored in September aren’t rational beings—he was 13–1 last year. But he’s certainly not earning his $9.9 million salary. The aura around the program was captured during Norvell’s postgame news conference after the Memphis loss, when a building alarm went off.

How Mike Norvell’s press conference ended pic.twitter.com/DjAASv2Ziy

— Zach Blostein (@ZBlostein247) September 14, 2024

Florida State’s chances of making the playoff: zero point zero.

Tony Petitti (4). The Big Ten commissioner has seen his league welcome eight power-conference opponents (or the Notre Dame Fighting Irish) into their home stadiums so far this season and win just two of those games. Good thing the Nebraska Cornhuskers took care of the Colorado Buffaloes and the Illinois Fighting Illini beat the Kansas Jayhawks, because otherwise the Big Ten hasn’t given the home fans much to brag about.

The Saturday results were not surprising, but still especially brutal: The Alabama Crimson Tide routed the Wisconsin Badgers, 42–10, with Wisconsin losing its quarterback early in the game; and the Fighting Irish beat the Purdue Boilermakers into a bloody pulp, 66–7.

Wisconsin wide receiver Will Pauling reacts during the Badgers’ loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide. / Gabi Broekema/USA TODAY NETWORK- Wisconsin / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

That follows the Michigan Wolverines being thumped in Ann Arbor, Mich., by the Texas Longhorns; the Iowa Hawkeyes blowing a lead in Iowa City to the Iowa State Cyclones; the Minnesota Gophers losing in Minneapolis to the North Carolina Tar Heels; and the Northwestern Wildcats falling in overtime in Evanston, Ill., to the Duke Blue Devils. Throw in the Washington Huskies’ defeat in the Seahawks’ stadium Saturday against the Washington State Cougars, and the Big Ten is not racking up an abundance of quality wins.

The best ones to date: the USC Trojans over the LSU Tigers in Las Vegas; the Penn State Nittany Lions over the West Virginia Mountaineers in Morgantown, W.Va.; and the Oregon Ducks blowing out the Oregon State Beavers in Corvallis, Ore. 

Big Ten’s chances of putting multiple teams in the playoff: it will happen, but the SEC will get more. The league has a 5–6 record against power-conference opponents plus Notre Dame with just four opportunities remaining: the UCLA Bruins at LSU, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights at the Virginia Tech Hokies, the Michigan State Spartans at Boston College, and Notre Dame at USC.

Domers Everywhere (again) (5). Viciously atomizing Purdue only makes Notre Dame’s loss to the Northern Illinois Huskies look worse, underscoring how badly the Irish underperformed in that game. They have two impressive victories on the road, but they bookend a defeat that can only be chalked up to lack of focus, effort and execution. Take care of business at home against a Mid-American Conference opponent and the Irish would be 25% of the way to a No. 5 playoff seed and a first-round home game. Instead, they’re outside the current playoff picture looking in.

Notre Dame’s chances of making the playoff: If they get to 11–1 with bookend road wins over Texas A&M and USC, the Irish might make it. At 10–2 with a MAC loss, it gets iffy. The evaporation of Florida State as a potential quality win could be a factor.

Ray Tanner (6). News broke last week that the South Carolina Gamecocks athletic director is on his way out of the position, and his parting gift was yet another iteration of the Chicken Curse that eternally afflicts his football program.

With a 17–0 home lead on LSU, South Carolina was well on its way to 3–0, 2–0 in the SEC. Then things started happening. The Gamecocks defense was gouged. Starting quarterback LaNorris Sellers was injured. Two pick-sixes were called back on penalties. Some other, more controversial flags and non-flags transpired. In the end, a 49-yard field goal attempt to tie the game curved wide on the final play.

South Carolina’s chances of making the playoff: The SEC is going to get plenty of bids, but a home loss that came so close to being a great win could push the Gamecocks down the pecking order.

LSU safety Major Burns (8) and linebacker Greg Penn III (18) sack South Carolina quarterback Robby Ashford. / Ken Ruinard / staff / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Pat Chun (7). He left the Washington State AD job for the same position at Washington, just in time for his old school to beat his new school. That dropped Chun’s record in the Apple Cup series to 1–5, with a three-game losing streak.

Washington’s chances of making the playoff: Going, going … This season looked like a major rebuild to begin with, and it still looks that way now. Except maybe worse. There are many losses to come. 

ACC brass (8). The duel between the Big 12 and ACC for multiple CFP bids is tilting away from Charlotte and toward Dallas early, if you look at the latest coaches poll rankings. The Utah Utes are in the top 10, while the Miami Hurricanes are not (which seems odd). Three more Big 12 teams are ranked (Kansas State Wildcats 14th, Oklahoma State Cowboys 15th, Iowa State Cyclones 21st), compared to two for the ACC (Clemson Tigers No. 19, Louisville Cardinals No. 20).

The ACC unbeaten California Golden Bears, Pittsburgh Panthers, North Carolina Tar Heels, Duke and Syracuse Orange haven’t been able to garner much traction yet with voters. The league slipped to 6–8 against power-conference competition over the weekend after losses by Boston College (at Missouri), Wake Forest (at home against Mississippi) and Virginia (to Maryland) more than offset a win by Pitt (over West Virginia).

The ACC’s chances of getting multiple playoff bids: Iffy. It would help if Florida State weren’t dragging down the entire enterprise.

Casey Wasserman (9). The entertainment executive, president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and avid UCLA fan watched his alma mater lay a giant egg in its Big Ten debut, being throttled in the Rose Bowl, 42–13, by the Indiana Hoosiers. UCLA fell behind 21–0 and was outgained by nearly 200 yards for the game and was a minus-two in the turnover department.

That dud follows UCLA’s narrow win over the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors in its opener, which did nothing to assuage concerns that new head coach DeShaun Foster might not be ready for the job.

UCLA’s chances of making the playoff: For now, the Bruins are a stronger contender to finish 18th in the Big Ten than being a playoff team.

Gloria Nevarez (10) and Tim Pernetti (11). The commissioners of the Mountain West and American Athletic conferences, respectively, cannot be enjoying the MAC attack on the Group of 5 playoff race. What once looked like it would be a tussle between the best teams of the MWC and AAC is now a more inclusive battle.

Northern Illinois has the best Group of 5 win to date, at Notre Dame. The Toledo Rockets have the most emphatic Group of 5 win to date, blasting Mississippi State. Memphis winning at Florida State is nice and all, but the Seminoles are an unmitigated disaster at this point. The UNLV Rebels have beaten both the Houston Cougars and Kansas, but those two teams are a combined 2–4.

Mountain West and American Athletic’s chances of making the playoff: Long way to go, but for now they’re outside The Dash’s bracket (see below).

Beaten-down Vanderbilt Commodores fans (12). There isn’t much you can count on year-over-year anymore in college football, given the pace of change. But one thing remains true: The Dores will let down their faithful. 

Latest example: After an uncharacteristically optimistic 2–0 start, they simply needed to go into Atlanta and beat the Georgia State Panthers to set up a matchup of unbeatens next Saturday in Columbia, Mo., against the Missouri Tigers. Alas, Vandy blew it, losing 36–32, surrendering the winning touchdown pass with 15 seconds left after taking its first lead less than a minute earlier.

Vanderbilt’s chances of making the playoff: Uh, no.

The Buzzin’ Dozen

The 12 teams The Dash would put in the playoff, if today were Selection Sunday:

1. Texas (SEC champion, automatic bid) 
2. USC (Big Ten champion, automatic bid)
3. Miami (ACC champion, automatic bid)
4. Utah (Big 12 champion, automatic bid)
5. Georgia (at-large selection) 
6. Alabama (at-large selection) 
7. Tennessee (at-large selection) 
8. Penn State (at-large selection)
9. Washington State (at-large selection)
10. Northern Illinois (Group of 5 champion, automatic bid)
11. Iowa State (at-large selection) 
12. Oregon (at-large selection)

First-round games: Oregon at Georgia; Iowa State at Alabama; Northern Illinois at Tennessee; Washington State at Penn State.

First-round byes: Texas, USC, Miami, Utah.