The conversation that planted the seeds for Gus Malzahn's reunion with Mike Norvell wasn't expected to go to that topic.

The FSU head coach, who got his first FBS job as well as his first on-field coaching job under Malzahn when he was the offensive coordinator at Memphis 18 years ago, said Saturday at the first stop of this year's Seminole Booster tour that the two have stayed in touch since they stopped working together at the end of the 2008 season.

Norvell and Malzahn had late-season bye weeks this past season that aligned for their respective FSU and UCF teams and made time for one of those catch-up calls. As the call progressed, it became more and more clear to Norvell that Malzahn may be growing weary of some of the responsibilities less related directly to the football field that have fallen on head coaches in today's college football era.

"That was not necessarily the initial purpose of the call, but was one of those things that just in conversation got to kind of talk through possibilities of where he was, what his day-to-day looked like..." Norvell said Saturday. "The head coaching role, there's a lot that comes to it. He's done it at an elite level throughout his career and as college football continues to change, this position can get further and further away from some of the things that maybe we started off being able to do or having time to do. He's a football coach. He loves calling offense, he loves being able to pour into his players and be able to kind of have that day-to-day interaction."

This was something that Malzahn alluded to during his introductory FSU press conference after leaving his position as UCF head coach to become the Seminoles' offensive coordinator. He admitted to being a man who loves coaching football and that some of the roster management and such things during the transfer portal era have made him take a lesser role as an offensive playcaller.

Malzahn, who like Norvell has been an offensive playcaller for the majority of his head coaching career, gave up playcalling to Tim Harris Jr., now FSU's pass game coordinator/wide receivers coach, midway through UCF's 2024 season when he fired defensive coordinator Ted Roof.

Throughout his coaching career, from his coaching roots as a high-school coach in Arkansas to winning a national title as Auburn as offensive coordinator and losing in another national title game to FSU as a head coach, Malzahn has been regarded as an offensive mastermind.

He'll enter the 2025 season as an offensive coordinator and able to focus only on playcalling and one side of the ball for the first time in over a decade after spending the last 12 seasons as head coach at Auburn and UCF.

Having worked with him much earlier in his coaching career, Norvell is excited to see what that can allow Malzahn to do offensively.

"The Lord blessed him. He's one of the most innovative minds in the game," Norvell said. "Being able to provide an opportunity for him to come do what he loves, somebody that I trust at an elite level, you can feel his energy."

While Norvell and Malzahn haven't yet coached a practice together at FSU. That'll come sometime in March when spring camp begins. But even before that day, Norvell has seen a sizable shift in Malzahn's demeanor with the weight of head-coaching responsibilities removed from his shoulders.

"We're a couple months into this, doing it together and just seeing it, being able to be back on a field with him, to be able to hear him talking to players in the meeting rooms, you could feel just his passion for the opportunity. It's been exciting..." Norvell said. "We had some real-life conversations of what we wanted it to look like on his end, things that are important on my end, things that are important, how we can collaborate and be able to put together what we want to be the best offense in college football. We've been a part of it together, we've been a part of it both separately throughout our years. We feel like he's got a great opportunity ahead. He's happy, I'm happy and we're just excited for what's in front."

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