Just picture this: an undefeated season, you’ve won your conference, and you have a real shot at making the 4-team playoffs. And then it went sideways. No fit quarterback left to play the position? Well, apologies, you’re not making the playoffs. If given a chance, Mike Norvell and Florida State would do everything to correct that injustice. Since that moment at the end of the 2023 season, it has been a downward spiral. A 2-10 record is just a part of it. Some people predicted the year to be a building phase. Looking back, the building needs to start from the foundation. The worst thing is that other programs do not wait for you to gather yourself up. They move on, and in this NIL era, they move fast.

The spending money part of the current landscape isn’t just about playing your players. There’s more to it. The idea is to be a step ahead of everyone else. Of course, having lucrative offers for your 4-star and 5-star pursuits helps, but that is the concluding bit of the whole ordeal. You may be interested in 10 players, but in reality, you’re getting one or two of them. Especially if you’re in ACC. Imagine competing with the likes of Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama, Georgia, and Oregon.

However, every relatively big and blueblood program gets to host players. A real chance to impress the players. That entails recruiting expenditures. Everything from getting the players and their families to your facility. Where does Florida State stand compared to other programs?

”Unfortunately for Florida State, while they don’t go shy on the money, they do spend pretty well; it’s nothing even close (compared to the other schools). Florida State spent 1.24 million, so almost exactly 50% of what was spent for Texas.” Brian Smith exposed some menacing figures.”In 2022-23, they were at like 1.24 for recruiting expenditures; it’s pretty good.” But just to give you an idea of the competitive failure, Brian showed a chart: ”Oregon 1.83 M, Michigan 2.2 M, Alabama 2.3 M, Texas 2.3, Oklahoma 2.6 M, Tennessee 2.9 M, A&M 2.9 M, Clemson 3.1 M, and Georgia, this is just wow, 4.5 M, you see where this is going with recruiting expenditures on the visits, how they go about really lavishing recruits, etc.”

It’s pretty clear that the program needs to step up and find new, creative, and optimal ways to raise funds to distribute cash and become an unavoidable catch for the talents. Norvell knows it the best, and he’s actively trying to come up with some ideas. The veteran head coach is investing $4.5 million from his salary back into the school as part of a one-year contract restructuring to boost the support for the student-athletes.

Even then, can you really compete if a program like Georgia is spending three times as much on recruiting expenditures? Add to that the whole drama about Florida State and ACC. Norvell is getting proactive as a financial assistant to the programs’ beleaguered situation, but how much will it pay off, especially given their $300M sacrifice as part of the ACC foundation?

Florida State owes a hefty sum to the ACC if they want to back off

The ACC could potentially receive up to $300 million each from Florida State and Clemson to release them from their contract. Undoubtedly, a $300 million payment to exit a conference is as mammoth as an elephant on a couch for any university athletic department in the United States. But if you focus on a bigger benefit, it sounds like a good alternative, nonetheless. Following the tie-cutting, the Seminoles can get way more in any fellow conference, stabilizing their recruitment pace in terms of other heavy competitors.

The new Big Ten media deal will see each school pull a hefty $70 million annually. It comes after a $12.9 million increase in conference distributions for FY25. The long-term vision, however, stands somewhere around $80 to $100 million figures in the future. The conference, hence, is pretty poised to see its gains climb.

On the other hand, joining the Southeastern Conference also made a big push to the university’s doomed financial health. The SEC is expected to distribute approximately $51 million to its teams in the year 2025 after the new TV deal solidified its ground last year. But it is highly unlikely for Florida to take such a step, so Norevll has to adjust his mind to make up some inside ACC sustainable changes instead of living in a fool’s paradise.