Florida Football: FSU has learned nothing from Dan Mullen

The Florida State Seminoles beat the Florida Gators this past season in a thrilling contest and they were so excited in Tallahassee to beat a 6-6 Florida football squad that they stormed the field.

Do you Neighbors to the West. Do you.

And to be fair FSU will probably be favored to beat Florida football in 2023 as Billy Napier rebuilds his squad and Mike Norvell finally has a team that can beat Jacksonville State. But as Seminole fans enjoy their accent to relevancy again in the college football world, the ghost of Dan Mullen is a cautionary tale of what happens when you build your foundation on a house of cards.

Florida Football: Solid foundation over instant results

Most of the recruiting publications posted their updated recruiting rankings and Florida football, despite the loss of Jaden Rashada and despite going 6-7, settled in around 11th. FSU, despite their greatest season in recent history, is currently around 20th.

Mullen, even after giving up on recruiting all together, still gave the Florida Gators the 18th-ranked class in 2021.

https://twitter.com/On3Recruits/status/1618756679902064640?s=20&t=2PSjQyKU8tgQ3mQWmYTS1g

So what has FSU done to suddenly be relevant?

Mullen’s old friend The Transfer Portal.

Mullen loved the portal instead of actual recruiting and in 2020 had the third-ranked transfer class in the country. Coincidently, 2020 was Florida’s best year under Mullen and should have resulted in a playoff birth if not for some footwear problems.

FSU is currently sitting ranked 2nd in the country for its transfer class of 2023 and it is part of what is fueling the hype behind a potential playoff bid for the Seminoles in 2023. And again, Norvell and friends may have a great season and act like all is well.

Here is where we here at Hail Florida Hail have to interject with a word of caution; Florida football is in the mess it is in because it relied on transfers to exclusively fill in gaps that its recruits couldn’t fill, and in time that house of cards collapses.

In other words when you bring in a band of mercenaries every year that have no real allegiance to your school, you have to retrain them every year as to what program expectations are. And when you don’t emphasize player development because you have the mentality that you can always get new players, the new players you get don’t develop either.

Billy Napier is grabbing players out of the portal himself, mostly as a stopgap, including a completely rebuilt offensive line. If year after year Napier continues to rely on the portal rather than the players he recruited then we will have some serious questions.

Consider that the third-of ranked transfer class of 2020 featured:

• Brenton Cox
• Khamal Ellison
• Lorenzo Lingard
• Stewart Reese
• Justin Shorter
• Zack Sessa
• Noah Keeter
• Jordan Pouncey

Cox was eventually run out town by Napier, Shorter was solid but never elite, Reese was a starter for two years but went undrafted by the NFL, and the rest had minimal impact with Florida football.

If your counter argument is that FSU can recruit and their current class of 2024 is ranked third in the country, do realize that seven of the nine commits are ranked above 290, with three of the commits being ranked over 500.

FSU is third because of quantity, not quality.

So, while it is really hard these days to find a quality insurance policy these days in the state of Florida, FSU fans may want to seek one out. Florida fans can tell you from first-hand experience that once the hastily built foundation crumbles, rebuilding takes time.