Danny Kanell has been following Florida State since he left campus 30 years ago for the NFL. He’s built quite the following on social media (363,000 on Twitter/X) while doing work on TV with CBS Sports, a satellite radio show and a podcast.
Kanell spoke to the Tallahassee Quarterback Club on Tuesday night. Always a favorite as an annual guest speaker, Kanell was candid.
“I have felt this around the program — I have described it as some of the worst vibes since I've been here as a player,” Kanell said. “It is as bad as I can feel as somebody who's on the outside, I don't live in Tallahassee, but I am online. I can feel the negativity.”
Kanell has returned to FSU often, taking in the season-opening win over Alabama in 2025 and coming back for the SMU game on Labor Day. He tried to take inventory of fans before the game: How do they feel about the program? How do they feel about Mike Norvell?
What Kanell thinks is some fans go into games hoping FSU loses so that a coaching change happens quickly.
“The most upset people are often the loudest, right? They're the most vocal in their complaints,” Kanell said. “I think it impacts the players on that field. I think it impacts the coaches in that room, and I think you can see it with Coach Norvell. Watch him. Look at how much it is taking a toll on him to feel the pressure, the weight of the world. That every single week, if I don't win this game, I'm gonna get fired. That is what I see from the outside, and I think it impacts the players. How would you feel if you were going to work every week, and all of a sudden you didn't meet your numbers that week? You're done. You're gone. And that is a reality for a lot of people. Coaches make a ton of money, and that's the reality. And I get it.”
Kanell is optimistic in his outlook for FSU, which is 2-2 going into Saturday’s game against Virginia at 3:30 p.m. (ESPN2). While he admits it won’t be a 10-win season like back when he played in the mid-1990s, Kanell thinks FSU will finish well and views 8-4 as a plausible scenario.
“I still think eight wins should be the expectation, and I think nine wins is within reason,” Kanell said. “And then if it is short of that, I do think if you lose to some of these programs that are around us in spending (a team’s player acquisition budget), then I think it's a reason to get upset. There's some serious decisions that have to be made.”
Player acquisition budgets soar
Kanell relayed an anecdote from coach Brian Kelly, who was at LSU as NIL was ramping up and saw the start of revenue sharing implemented in 2025 before he was dismissed.
“Brian Kelly, the head coach at Notre Dame and LSU, he's been coming on my radio show for two hours every week, once a week,” Kanell said. “He was on this morning (Tuesday), and I've really been fascinated talking to him because he's been in coaching for 30-plus years, most recently LSU. So he is somebody who knew college football the way it was and coached in it where it's gone, and he was saying how hard it is to keep up with, and that the first year he said on average the increase by the classes for each team's payroll has gone up by 66 percent, which is insane.
“He was telling me the first two years at LSU that he was there they were at $11 million for their roster,” Kanell said. “He said then his last year there they made a big investment to him and they got it up to $23 million, and then he said when he got fired they brought in Lane Kiffin, and he's at $49 million. He said, ‘Imagine that. It keeps going up 66 percent. That's going up again.' So we're going to be at $65 million. It'll be $80 million, and it's going to go up to $100 million before we know it. It's not sustainable. Everybody knows it's not sustainable.”
Kanell said he feels the financial playing field is leveled by the $20.5 million revenue sharing allotments that schools can fundraise and spend on players. Most, but reportedly not all, ACC schools fully fundraise the $20.5 million. It’s a different era from the 1990s, when FSU had far more talent than other ACC schools.
“Let me tell you where things have changed. It used to be if we were playing Wake Forest, NC State, Maryland, Duke, we could show up, Syracuse, we could show up, and we knew without a shadow of a doubt, we were going to win by 50,” Kanell said. “But you know what? It wasn't because we were coached, I love my coaches, it wasn't because we were coached that much better. Getting off the bus, we had an advantage, and that advantage was probably a 30-point advantage just in talent alone. That gap has changed. Those days are gone. That does not exist because of the (revenue sharing/NIL) money. Because everybody is spending money.”
FSU roster budget is approximately $30 million, sources told the Osceola. That’s more than most ACC schools, although Miami is the No. 1 school (based on The Athletic’s reporting). All of FSU’s losses in ACC play are frustrating if the coaching staff has more money, Kanell admits.
“Does that excuse two losing seasons? Does that excuse losing to Stanford, who we probably have a lot more money than they do? No,” Kanell said. “So there are some things there that I think are very much worthy of criticism.”
Washington legislation
Kanell also offered some expanded thoughts on the Protect College Sports Act. He’s in favor, broadly speaking, of the legislation.
“The Protect College Sports Act, which is the solution that the government has come up with, actually passed through the Senate, 77 votes was the amount they got, which is pretty impressive, considering they had bipartisan support for it,” Kanell said. “I think it's a good thing, but now it has to get to the House, and that scares me because I don't know if we're going to get there or not. Again, we're dealing with politicians, and there's an election coming up, and they're going to use this to try to make a statement. And if we can get everybody on the same page, we can get a structure in place that is not perfect, but it'll be way better than we have now.”
One of the many positives, in Kanell’s view, is a fixed cap across the four power conferences.
“The politicians have said, and I do believe this, that if they get this passed, that they will actually have a real cap that will be enforced by the conferences,” Kanell said. “That will have penalties that they will have to pay attention to. It'll go up to $48 million. That's a lot of money. It's about where some of the top spending schools are right now.”
Kelly’s anecdote about LSU to Kanell would reinforce just that, a ballpark where the top tier of teams are competing but the rest of the power conference schools are lagging. A cap would give FSU a point that it could target in reaching deals with sponsors while knowing that other schools didn’t have a considerable financial advantage.
“But at least if you're Florida State or at any other school in the ACC or wherever you are, you'll know what you have to get to be competitive,” Norvell said. “You don't have to guess and have this wild west market that we're in right now, which you might think you know what you're preparing for. And then it keeps moving away from you, and you go back to your donors, and you're like, ‘Hey, I thought you said we needed 30.’ And they're like, ‘No, they have 40. Well, we undersold it.’ It's a complete mess.”
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