How his former coaches helped mold Mike Norvell (2024)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Mike Norvell sat in David Reese’s living room in the Dallas suburbs as the two relaxed and watched a college football game. Reese, who was Norvell’s Pop Warner coach at the time, had a hard time watching games without breaking them down in detail. He planned to go into this one as a casual observer, but Norvell, who was in middle school at the time, had other plans.

Norvell peppered Reese with questions that belied his age. He wanted to know why one of the teams didn’t line up in a particular formation, sought his coach’s opinion on both teams and even critiqued play-calling decisions.

“I’m thinking, ‘Who are you?’ ” Reese recalled in a recent phone interview. “He was always wanting to learn. He’s always been like that ever since I can remember.”

Norvell brought the same intelligence and inquisitiveness as Reese’s quarterback. He only needed an instruction once and he’d have it down pat. He led a simplified offense, but Norvell knew the ins and outs of various advanced passing concepts.

“He just developed from that and always had a hunger to be perfection,” Reese said. “He’s got like a photographic memory. He’s real sharp. He’s a very personable person. He gets along with people great. He reads people great. What you see is what you get. That’s him.”

More than two decades later, Norvell, 38, became coach at Florida State. During the news conference following his hire in December, he thanked everything and everyone that helped make his achievement possible. His faith and family were first and foremost, but he also showed gratitude to the coaches who helped him navigate the football landscape.

“The impact you guys have made on my life in helping build me, develop me, support me through all the decisions that have been made to my growth as a coach and as a person — I’m forever grateful for you,” Norvell said. “You are the reason why I do what I do. I can hopefully one day have players that look at me the way I look at you and respect you for the jobs you did for me and my journey of growth. Thank you to those coaches.”

He specifically mentioned Reese, Mike Barber, Clint Conque, Gus Malzahn and Todd Graham. This is how, with the guidance and assistance of these men, Norvell went from wunderkind to orchestrator of Florida State’s rebuild.

Norvell started playing football when he was 5 in Irving, Texas, and it became his passion. Reese came into the picture when Norvell was 9, and stayed close to him through high school.

Reese was impressed by Norvell’s football acumen, but his smarts also translated to the classroom. Norvell skipped a grade and made straight A’s as a freshman at Irving’s MacArthur High. While he was advanced academically, he was small in stature and the age gap made that an even bigger deal.

Norvell transferred to Arlington’s Grace Preparatory Academy as a sophom*ore. Reese, who also was an assistant to Barber on Grace Prep’s coaching staff, tried to convince Norvell’s mother, Kelly Wood, to hold him back a year so that he had a better chance of competing athletically. Wood, though, wanted her son to continue to be challenged intellectually. As a result, Norvell played on Grace’s junior varsity team as a sophom*ore.

Grace Prep was a 30-minute drive from Irving, so Norvell often would ride back with Reese after games and periodically stayed at his home. After one particularly brutal outing in which Norvell was sacked constantly and beat up physically, he sought answers.

“He goes, ‘What can I do to get bigger and stronger?’ ” Reese said. “He literally weighed like 124 pounds his sophom*ore year. He was not very big. And his metabolism, like most kids his age, burned more than he could intake.”

Norvell decided to make a change in the offseason. Brandon Barber, the coach’s son, had been playing tight end but switched to quarterback and Norvell moved to wide receiver. His size wasn’t as much of a detriment, and he moved up to varsity and found success in his last two seasons. Norvell then joined the Grace Prep coaching staff after graduation and enrolled in online college courses at the suggestion of Reese and others. The logic was that, especially considering his size, he’d only wind up redshirting if he went straight to college.

“I thought, ‘Hey, that would just put you with your regular class anyway,’ ” Reese said. “He was very good (as an assistant). You could tell he had a knack for doing that.”

It also put Norvell in the awkward predicament of coaching players he had been teammates with just a year earlier. They were friends and he still hung out with them after practice. Regardless, he was able to separate Mike Norvell the teammate from Mike Norvell the coach.

“Once again, he wanted to absorb,” Reese said. “He wanted to know, ‘Why are you doing this?’ He’s always been that way.”

Clint Conque was promoted to offensive coordinator at Louisiana Tech after the 1998 season, and he and then-La Tech quarterback coach Pete Carmichael worked the Manning Passing Academy in Hammond, La., in the summer of ’99 as counselors. Norvell and Brandon Barber were there as participants, working to get noticed by colleges.

“So we go through this camp and Pete mentioned the name Mike Norvell to me,” Conque said via phone. “He said, ‘Hey, this is a skinny kid who can run a little bit and he’s got great hands. He’s somebody that we need to probably put him on board maybe as a walk-on at Louisiana Tech.’ I said, ‘OK, fine. No big deal.’ ”

Conque left to become coach at Central Arkansas, then a Division II school, after the 1999 season and Carmichael jumped to the NFL as the Cleveland Browns’ tight ends coach, but Norvell and Barber still walked-on at Louisiana Tech. Conque was in his office making recruiting calls one afternoon during winter break in 2000 when he heard a bang on the front door of the facility. He found the two waiting for someone to answer their knocks.

Conque recognized Barber because he’d connected with his dad at Louisiana Tech, but only knew Norvell by name from the Manning Passing Academy. Both wanted to transfer to Central Arkansas, which is located in Conway, and Conque agreed to let them join the team as walk-ons in January 2001.

Central Arkansas had won just three games the previous season and there was an obvious need for difference-makers at just about every position, but wide receiver was one of the most dire. Norvell stood out as an overachiever who worked hard, ran great routes and was an excellent teammate; he earned a half-scholarship by the end of spring practice.

Norvell went on to become the Gulf South Conference Freshman of the Year and helped lead Central Arkansas to the first Division II playoff appearance in school history that fall. He also earned a full scholarship. He finished his career with 213 catches for 2,611 yards and 15 touchdowns; he is second in school history in receptions and fifth in career yards.

He also spent plenty of time at his coach’s house, and he and Conque developed a bond.

“Mike came from a disadvantaged background,” Conque said. “He grew up in a single-parent family. He has a wonderful mom. … He was like a son for my wife and I.”

Norvell spent one summer working at a recycling sanitation center in Conway, and Conque remembers checking in on him once and finding him covered with dirt and soot from head to toe. Norvell also joined a community service group and worked at a youth camp going into his sophom*ore season. He lost a bet among the campers in the summer; as a result, he had to get cornrows, which culminated in a photo that went viral after his hire at Florida State.

I need to go do the oral history on why Mike Norvell had these cornrows. The length shows this was well thought out. He showed up knowing there’d be pictures. He was in the middle of Arkansas.

Forget recruiting and assistant coaches, these are the answers #FSU needs 😂 pic.twitter.com/GiEFGu6dYi

— Tashan Reed (@tashanreed) December 8, 2019

Norvell frequently had informal conversations with Conque about his desire to get into coaching, and when Norvell finished his career in 2005, Conque hired him as a graduate assistant.

“You could tell that whenever he did community service work or going back to his high school, he had an affinity for coaching and for teaching and working with young people,” Conque said. “And that’s why I hired him to get his college career started.”

Conque was prepared to make Norvell a full-time assistant in 2007 after just one season as a GA, but Norvell interviewed for a graduate assistant role at Tulsa and decided to take that instead. Gus Malzahn, Tulsa’s co-offensive coordinator at the time, made the referral to then-coach Todd Graham.

“Mike and I are very similar,” Graham said via phone a month before he was hired as coach at Hawaii. “I’m a very passionate, high-energy and extremely competitive guy. He just reminded me so much of myself when I was getting started as a young coach.

“I can remember the first time I met him, we just instantly connected. It was just his passion and how genuine he was. He loved and respected the game. Then he was just a sponge and willing to learn. He was willing to spend whatever time it took. A lot of people just talk about it. And we had similar backgrounds. He comes from a broken family; I come from a broken family. I think we both had those types of hurts in our lives. And coaches filled that void for us.”

From a football standpoint, Norvell’s intellect and attention to detail made an impression. His role was limited, but his passion was apparent.

“You could tell Mike was different when he was a GA back at Tulsa,” Malzahn said during a recent news conference when asked about Norvell. “He’s driven. He’s a great coach. He’s not a good coach — he’s a great coach.”

Malzahn left for the offensive coordinator job at Auburn before the 2009 season, and Norvell was the choice to take up that assistant coaching vacancy and become Tulsa’s passing game coordinator. The Golden Hurricane had the 34th-ranked passing attack in the country in ’09 and jumped to No. 14 in 2010 under Norvell.

“I told him, ‘If you’ll be patient and believe in what we’re doing, you’re going to be a head coach,’ ” Graham said. “From the time I hired him, we talked about his goals, and that was the goal all along. To do that, that means to be a position coach, be a coordinator and be a head coach, and be able to go and spread our philosophy and impact young people.”

Graham took the coaching job at Pittsburgh in 2011 and brought along Norvell as his co-offensive coordinator; the other co-coordinator was Calvin Magee, who had been Michigan’s OC under Rich Rodriguez. Graham jumped to Arizona State the following year and again brought along Norvell, who was named the Sun Devils’ offensive coordinator.

The Graham-Norvell relationship continued to strengthen. Winning games obviously was the goal, but they also wanted to make a difference in their players’ lives because that’s what had been done for them.

“If not for coaches, he nor I would be in the position that we are,” Graham said. “I mean, they made the difference in our lives. Obviously, our faith and our family helped, but coaches were the difference-makers for us and the dad figures in our lives. … I just think we connected because we have the same calling in life.”

After four seasons at Arizona State, Norvell outgrew his assistant status. Memphis needed a new coach after Justin Fuente left for Virginia Tech following the 2015 season, and turned to the Eastman & Beaudine executive search firm. Fuente had taken the Tigers from a four-win team to a squad that won nine games in his final season. Then-Memphis athletic director Tom Bowen was determined to avoid a drop-off and sought someone with an innovative offensive system who could recruit the South. Norvell fit that bill.

“It was really critical to not lose momentum in an institution that’s football history had been peak and then valley,” Bowen, who stepped down as Memphis’ AD in May, said via phone. “The idea was that if we were going to build this program — and we had made a lot of front-end investment in it — it couldn’t valley. It had to be very competitive. Mike was a leading candidate for me. We went down and met with him. And he was very, very, very impressive.”

Norvell was impressed with what Fuente built at Memphis, and was confident he could take things even further. He ultimately convinced the administration of that during the hiring process.

“I was just impressed with his maturity and his organizational dynamic of being able to articulate, in very good terms, what needed to happen and what he was going to do,” Bowen said. “His vision for football at Memphis was compelling, to say the least.”

Graham was genuinely happy for Norvell. Before it became official, Eastman & Beaudine president Bob Beaudine called to give him a heads-up.

“Mike and I celebrated,” Graham said. “It was tough because it’s kind of like your son leaving your house and going off to college. But also there was a sense of pride.”

Norvell knew he wouldn’t bring in many blue-chip recruits at Memphis. What he could dictate, though, was finding quality in his talent pool.

He showed an uncanny ability to identify talented prospects who had potential and fit his system. He also pushed the administration to invest in the necessary resources to build a consistently successful program. That translated into increased people and resources for the medical and strength-and-conditioning staffs. He pushed for an indoor practice facility, which was approved for construction in June, and sought to upgrade the existing facilities.

Beyond the internal work, Norvell also reached out to the community. He made it a point to be engaged, visible and accessible, whether that was with the fans, donors or media.

“He made it important that everybody felt a part of what he was doing,” Bowen said. “He’s a very humble man. He’s not focused on himself as much as he focuses on what’s going on.”

Conque, by then the coach at FCS member Stephen F. Austin, remembers running into Norvell at the National Football Foundation Awards banquet in New York on Dec. 5, 2017 — the day Norvell was rewarded for Memphis’ 10-win season with a five-year, $13 million extension.

“Those five years or six years that we were all together as a player and a coach, I’m just very proud that we were a part — a very small part — but a part of his journey,” Conque said. “I think he would tell you a lot of people contributed, but we were just very proud that our paths crossed. … The success he’s had, both my wife and I are extremely proud of him.”

When he still was coach at Arizona State, Graham would visit Memphis once a year. He could tell Norvell had remained true to himself.

“I knew Mike was going to win,” Graham said. “I’ve not been surprised by anything that he’s done. I’ve been very proud. Not only has he won games, but he really impacted that community and impacted those young people’s lives. That’s what I’m the most proud of.”

Memphis took a step back with an eight-win 2018 season, then had the most successful season in school history in 2019, going 12-2 and advancing to the Cotton Bowl. During a Tigers off week late in the season, Norvell met with Florida State president John Thrasher, athletic director David Coburn and DHR International executive search consultant Glenn Sugiyama.

After the regular season ended, the hiring group zeroed in on Norvell. While he was coaching Memphis to an AAC title-game victory against Cincinnati, reports surfaced that he’d agreed to become FSU’s next coach. He made it official the next morning.

Norvell was 38-15 in his four seasons at Memphis, and his 71.7 winning percentage is the best in school history; he’s also the only coach to take the Tigers to four consecutive bowl games.

“It’s the golden years or the Renaissance years of Tiger football,” Bowen said. “Mike’s been one of the key architects to make it happen. He’ll be remembered very fondly and for a long time here in Memphis, for sure.”

Between hiring a staff, recruiting and preparing the current team, the two months since Norvell, wife Maria and daughter Mila walked across Bobby Bowden Field at Doak Campbell Stadium for the first time have been a whirlwind. The feedback has been almost all positive. Several boosters have made large contributions. The fan base is reinvigorated. Media coverage has been favorable. Much as he had to at Memphis, though, Norvell will have to prove himself once again when the season begins.

The program has fallen from the national championship-winning days of Bobby Bowden and Jimbo Fisher. The Seminoles have been mediocre for three consecutive seasons, but those who know Norvell best don’t think there’s more mediocrity in the future.

Graham said he was brought to tears during Norvell’s introductory news conference because of the genuine passion and excitement his former understudy displayed.

“Mike’s the perfect person to come back in there and restore discipline,” Graham said. “He’s going to do that through building positive relationships with the players and everybody around him.”

Conque expects Norvell to be able to unite all those associated with Florida State under the common goal of turning the program around. While he has the utmost confidence that Norvell can pull it off, he also anticipates that it’ll likely be a process.

“There’s a reason why there was a coaching change,” Conque said. “To expect him to go out and win 10 or 12 games next year — I’m not saying they can’t do that — but that’s probably something down the road. I think he’ll build it the right way, and I think that he’ll have a lot of success there. I would think that he’d have an opportunity at a destination place like Florida State to stay there a very long time.”

Reese’s view is similar. It’ll take time to incorporate the system, recruit players who fit that system and develop continuity among the staff, but he has no doubt Norvell will restore the program.

“There’s no doubt in my mind about what he’s going to do at Florida State to get them back and what’s going to happen,” Reese said. “And guys are going to gravitate to them. Everybody is because he’s genuine. He cares. What you see is what you get.

“Everything you’re hearing and everything you’re seeing, I promise you, it’s not for show. It’s not going to go away. It’s not going to change. They’re going to hit adversity, obviously, you always will, and you’ll find out everything he preaches and tells the kids, that’s what he does and that’s what he expects. He’s going to be successful.”

At every stop thus far, Norvell’s coaching ability has captured the attention of those nearby and left a lasting impression. The Seminoles present his biggest challenge yet.

“I can tell you this: No one will outwork him in how hard he will work to build relationships, build a community, inspire those players and attract players that want to be a part of a family,” Graham said. “That’s what it is for me and Mike. When you grow up and you’re missing that and you have a broken home and broken family, you seek family. That, to me, is what Mike will do: He’ll bring family.

“He’ll restore that — and I think he’ll do it in a hurry.”

(Top photo: Phil Sears / Associated Press)