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Worst Florida State football seasons: Where does the 2024 season rank?
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- Worst Florida State football seasons: Where does the 2024 season rank?
Florida State football has not been synonymous with losing for a long time.
That's what happens when a legendary coach such as Bobby Bowden takes the reigns of a program and leads it to wins over four decades. That makes the 2024 season even more challenging for FSU fans to swallow. The Seminoles showed massive improvement under Mike Norvell, winning 10 games in 2022 and 13 last season.
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REQUIRED READING: FSU football's Mike Norvell 'shocked' by struggles this season, promises changes
Despite a perfect regular season and ACC championship, FSU was snubbed from last year's four-team College Football Playoff field for one-loss teams in Alabama and Texas.
Still, the Seminoles entered 2024 with high expectations and a chance to compete for not only the ACC but also the newly expanded 12-team CFP and potentially even a first-round bye with a top-four seed. Nothing has gone right for FSU, which boasted its only win against Cal on Sept. 21 .
With a loss Saturday vs. Notre Dame , the Seminoles would have nine losses in a season for the first time since 1974. The eight losses already are the most in a season since 1975, one year before Bowden took over.
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Here's a look at the worst seasons for FSU football:
1973: FSU football went 0-11
Under coach Larry Jones, the Seminoles did not win a single game during the 1973 season, losing to both Miami and Florida. The loss to the Hurricanes was 14-10 on Sept. 29, 1973, in Tallahassee, while the loss to Florida came in the final regular-season finale, a 49-0 loss in Gainesville.
The season had an ominous start, with more than two dozen scholarship players leaving the team during spring training. FSU's offense scored a season-high 17 points all season and had four one-score losses. The 0-11 season ended Jones' time in Tallahassee with a 15-19 career record. He resigned the following season .
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1974: Seminoles follow winless season with 1-10 mark
Darrell Mudra was hired to replace Jones after a disastrous 1973 season. He was hired from Western Illinois, where he had spent the previous five years building the program. Mudra had a track record of taking over a struggling program and rebuilding it.
He opened his tenure with eight consecutive losses, including to No. 3 Alabama, No. 14 Florida and No. 5 Auburn in consecutive weeks. However, he gave the Seminoles faithful some faith with a 21-14 win over Miami in Coral Gables.
1952: Florida State goes 1-8-1 in final season under Don Veller
Don Veller's fifth season at FSU featured two non-defeats: A 6-6 tie with Stetson and a 27-13 win over Wofford. Outside of a 13-7 loss to Penn State, none of the other losses were by less than two scores. Only one other loss was by less than double figures.
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Veller, who coached FSU to its first win in program history in 1948, had a career mark of 31-12-1 with the Seminoles. After resigning as the football coach, he became the FSU men's golf coach.
2024: Mike Norvell, FSU follow 13-1 season with 1-8 start
Sitting at 1-8 entering Week 11 of the 2024 college football season, Norvell and the Seminoles still have time to avoid the marks of the worst seasons in FSU's program history. The Seminoles must win out to avoid the first three-win season since 1975. FSU also needs at least one win to avoid the second-worst record in program history at 1-11.
The Seminoles have No. 8 Notre Dame this week in South Bend, Indiana, before having their third bye week of the season in Week 12. FSU closes the season with a matchup against one-win Charleston Southern and then at home against in-state rival Florida .
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Regardless of what happens in the season's final three games, Norvell and his staff have a steep hill to climb to get the Seminoles back into College Football Playoff contention, as they were a season ago.
1975: Darrell Mudra fired after 3-8 second season
Following a 3-8 second season in Tallahassee, Mudra was shown the door following the 1975 season. He posted a 3-14 record in two years with FSU, which is easily the worst record in the program's history.
There were concerns about Mudra coaching from the press box instead of from the field . Interestingly, Mudra's firing and the hiring of Bobby Bowden helped spark the Seminoles into a powerhouse.
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FSU football's worst record in ACC
From 1947, when FSU formed a football program, until 1991, the Seminoles played independently. FSU joined the ACC in 1992 and lost its first conference game in 1995. Bowden went 3-5 in 2006, FSU's first losing season in ACC play.
Jimbo Fisher's 2017 team and Willie Taggart's 2018 squad each posted a 3-5 conference record. However, the worst ACC record in a season before this season was when Norvell went 2-6 in 2020. That year could be written off due to what Norvell had inherited from Taggart and the COVID-19-shortened season.
However, with last week's loss to North Carolina, FSU has wrapped up conference play for the 2024 season and the 1-7 conference record will easily go down as the worst in program history.
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Here's a look at the worst FSU records in ACC play:
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1. 2024:1-7
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2. 2020:2-6
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T3. 2006:3-5
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T3 2017:3-5
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T3. 2018:3-5
Mike Norvell FSU football record
Norvell joins Bill Peterson as the only FSU coach with at least three losing seasons. Peterson had five out of them, but none of them were as bad as this 2024 season has been.
REQUIRED READING: Mike Norvell contract, buyout details: What FSU owes if it fires football coaches
With conference play wrapped up for the Seminoles following last week's loss to the Tar Heels, Norvell now has a .500 career record against the conference across 40 games in five seasons.
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2020:3-6, 2-6 ACC
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2021:5-7, 4-4 ACC
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2022:10-3, 5-3 ACC
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2023:13-1, 8-0 ACC
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2024:1-8, 1-7 ACC
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Career:32-25, 20-20
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Where 2024 FSU football season ranks among worst in program history
