If everything had gone according to plan, John Thrasher might be preparing for his victory lap right about now.

When he was named the 15th president of Florida State University in late 2014, Thrasher set his sights on a very ambitious agenda, with a top goal of helping FSU become recognized as one of the nation's Top 25 public universities by U.S. News & World Report.

In September of this year, that dream became a reality -- and then some.

When the latest rankings were released, FSU actually checked in at No. 18 on the prestigious list. That's eight spots higher than one year earlier and 25 spots higher than when Thrasher took office five years ago.

"I couldn't be prouder of where we are," he said, before rattling off a number of other accomplishments for the school.

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Under Thrasher's leadership, the university also is in the midst of a wide range of facility improvements, including the construction of a $133 million student union, a $70 million Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science building and a newly renovated Seminole Golf Course, which was designed by golfing legend Jack Nicklaus.

FSU also continues seeing record numbers of applicants each year, while the academic profile of incoming freshmen gets better and better.

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Not everything Thrasher touches has turned to gold, however.

Two years ago, he played a key role in the hiring of Willie Taggart as Florida State's head football coach. The decision was praised by many initially, but Taggart's tenure got off to a poor start in 2018 and never seemed to trend in the right direction.

With the Seminoles struggling again this season and concerns mounting throughout the athletics department about the coach's ability to right the ship, Thrasher faced an extremely difficult decision. He could urge fans and boosters to remain patient while offering Taggart additional resources to shuffle his staff again, or he could make a sudden change and try to bring in a new head coach to get things in order.

Neither solution would be simple.

The former would come with a tremendous financial risk, as season ticket sales and donations to Seminole Boosters were both plummeting. The latter option would be extremely costly as well, with Taggart due an $18 million buyout if he were fired without cause after just two seasons.

Complicating matters was the fact that Thrasher is expected to retire when his current contract expires in November 2020, and athletics director David Coburn likely won't be far behind. Given that backdrop, many program insiders figured Thrasher would be extremely reluctant to make a coaching change in 2019. Most figured he would bide his time and let the university's next president and athletics director bring in their own head football coach for 2021.

Instead, the Seminoles fired Taggart on Nov. 3 of this year -- just hours after an ugly home loss to rival Miami and with three games remaining in the regular season.

Last week, on the morning of his 76th birthday, Thrasher sat down with Warchant.com for his first in-depth interview about the subject. He explained why he felt firing Taggart was necessary to avoid a potential financial "disaster" for the athletics department, and he shared more details about the hiring process that led to landing former Memphis head coach Mike Norvell.

Here is a transcript of that interview, with small portions edited for clarity or brevity.

Q: Coach Norvell has been on the job for a couple of weeks now. Could you take me back to when you knew he was the guy? And what are your first impressions since he started?

A: Things are good, from everything I'm hearing. He's doing everything he said he would do. He got here and hit the ground running. He's hiring coaches, he's recruiting. ... And I think we're going to do fine with recruiting when you consider where we started. You know, he had a championship game to play, so I wasn't going to keep him from doing that -- none of us were -- even though he wanted to come here. I wanted to see him coach that last game. And it turned out to be very successful for him, his team and the University of Memphis.

But everything I've seen and heard, all positive stuff. Very positive stuff. So I'm very optimistic about next year and how it's going to go. I like him as a person. I like him as a coach, obviously. Like his values. And like I said, when I first met him, I started measuring everybody else I talked to against him. And I kept coming back to him.

The first time we talked, we met for over two hours. A very small group, an intimate group. We talked about everything -- his background, philosophy, assistant coaches, Xs and Os, all those kinds of things. And after seeing him and talking to him and seeing his passion for the game -- the game of football, as well as the kids that play for him -- I just knew there was something special there. So after that, we talked to some other people, and I kept coming back to him. And measuring them against him. I didn't really see anybody that I thought, for the future of Florida State, would fit better than he did.