WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- For all of the ugliness on the field, hey, at least Saturday was pretty nice from a weather standpoint.
Partly cloudy skies. Not terribly hot or humid.
At least until Mike Norvell walked outside of the visitors' locker room at Truist Field to talk with reporters.
Then, literally out of nowhere, a steady rain began to fall on him and the small gathering of reporters who made the trip from Tallahassee to watch the latest dismal performance for Florida State football.
The rain started right after he began his 11-minute interview, and then it slowed and stopped shortly after he was done.
Which made one wonder what symbolism would have appeared if Norvell had conducted his post-game press conference indoors as usual. Would the air conditioners have stopped working? The roof cave in? A sinkhole envelop the room?
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It's been that kind of season for Norvell and the Seminoles ... and we're just three games in. What a ride it has been!
A nail-biting overtime loss to No. 9 Notre Dame. A nails-across-the-chalkboard, last-second loss to FCS opponent Jacksonville State.
And now a 35-14, nail-in-the-coffin (for somebody? Anybody?) loss at Wake Forest.
Look, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that FSU lost again on Saturday. In this current moment, Wake Forest has a better football team than Florida State. There's a reason the Demon Deacons were favored in this game.
They have a better quarterback. They have a much better offensive line. Their skill players on both sides of the ball, while maybe not as fast or tall, have a better understanding of what they're supposed to be doing. And their entire team plays with more confidence.
Not the chest-beating, celebrating-after-a-routine-play kind of bravado we sometimes see. But real confidence. The kind that leads to making tough catches -- again and again and again. The kind that comes from real belief and conviction that if they do what their coaches are telling them, that they're going to be successful.
So, the loss for Florida State wasn't a major shock. It's how the Seminoles lost that once again was the bigger problem.
One week after snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, by giving up a 59-yard touchdown to an FCS team on the final play of the game, the Seminoles on this day were not all that competitive.
There's no point in hashing out all of the ways the Seminoles failed. We can simply agree that the game was never really in doubt, and that it quite frankly could have been worse. Wake didn't even play its A game -- the Deacs committed more penalties than FSU -- and their coaches throttled things down once they surged ahead by 21 points in the second half.
