DANIA BEACH, Flash. — There’s a moment, a split second, really, just as the weight of the College Playoff Committee’s verdict takes hold for the rest of the Florida State team, that it seems as if the impenetrable wall of optimism and
In the video from the team’s watch party Dec. 3, which was broadcast on national TV following the committee’s most controversial decision in its 10-year history, Norvell is seated center frame, surrounded by his players, including injured QB Jordan Travis just a few feet away. The announcement is made. Groans echo through the room. Travis covers his face with a towel. Players turn to each other in disbelief. Norvell is still.
He taps the tips of his fingers together. He tilts his head downward. It’s instantly obvious he was completely unprepared for this eventuality, and it’s not hard to imagine a war of will roiling in his mind between the entirely reasonable furor that must’ve been his natural response
and the measured determination that has become his stock-in-trade through four years leading this program.
This is the moment it should come — the eruption, the anger, the outrage, the flurry of epithets directed at a faraway group of people who upended his worldview, the worldview he’d sold to this team for years, the one that had carried Florida State to 19 straight wins and an undefeated season.
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