FSU football high school recruiting in the Mike Norvell era has been a tale of two tales. The state of the program, combined with a global pandemic that prevented face-to-face recruiting interaction for the first year and a half of Norvell’s tenure, made things extremely difficult.
Norvell had a decision to make, and those two factors made it relatively easy with the introduction of the transfer portal. Norvell knew he needed to get better players who could play immediately, and those players would likely come from the transfer portal and not high school players who would take a year or two to develop.
It’s why FSU took smaller high school recruiting classes and more transfers in the first few recruiting cycles. However, as the product on the field improved, we’ve seen the quality of high school recruits signing with FSU improve drastically.
There have been some de-commitments along the way, some with bigger reactions than others, and some were never FSU quality (recruited by Willie Taggart). However, in hindsight, looking back at de-commitments lets you know losing players to other programs doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end of the world. Let’s take a look at the players who de-committed in the Mike Norvell era, and you’ll find only one has truly become an impact guy since signing elsewhere.
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