The frustration is completely understandable.

Unlike fans of most college football programs, Florida State's supporters have experienced a season like this only two other times in the last 45 years -- in Bobby Bowden's first season and in Jimbo Fisher's last.

Both of those teams also sported 2-5 records though seven games, and while I wasn't covering the Seminoles in 1976, it's a safe bet that plenty of fans were unhappy and concerned then, just as they were in 2017. Just as they are in 2020.

The circumstances surrounding those three 2-5 starts were very different, however.

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While Bowden was in his first season, like Mike Norvell is now, the program's expectations were completely different. Florida State had never been a national power at that point. The Seminoles enjoyed a few nice seasons under Bill Peterson in the 1960s, but they were not considered a perennial national championship contender. And the three years preceding Bowden's arrival were absolutely brutal -- the 'Noles went 0-11 in 1973, 1-10 in 1974 and 3-8 in 1975.

So, fans probably weren't stunned when Bowden won only two of his first seven games. (He actually would start 2-6 before winning the final three contests.)

Fisher's 2-5 start in 2017 was somewhat different. As troubling as that season was, he had several things working in his favor that kept some fans from completely losing their minds.

Number one, he had won a national championship just a few years earlier and had reached 10 wins in six of his first seven seasons. So there was proof of concept. They knew he could coach.

Number two, the Seminoles had lost their starting quarterback to injury in the season opener and were forced to start true freshman James Blackman the rest of the year.

Number three, Fisher's team was competitive in each of the first four losses. The season opener against Alabama got away once Deondre Francois was sidelined, but the losses to N.C. State, Miami and Louisville were all one-score games.

Things changed during the fifth loss that season, however. When a seemingly disinterested Florida State squad went up to Boston College in late October and got blown out, 35-3, there were no more rationalizations. The players looked like they had quit, and nothing raises the ire of a fan base more than seeing a team fail to compete. It's embarrassing to the program and the university. And it reflects very poorly on a coaching staff.

As fans and media, we might not be able to decipher whether players are executing an outside-zone running play perfectly or if defensive backs are using proper technique when playing press-man coverage, but we can dang sure see when players aren't trying. We know what effort looks like.

And when a team isn't playing with great effort or intensity, the first thing that does is it raises our "buy-in" antennas. We start to wonder whether these players believe in their coaches; whether the head coach's message is resonating with the team.

That's one of the major concerns for many FSU fans right now.

It's not just the fact that the Seminoles are losing a lot of games in Norvell's first season. It's that they're getting blown out on what seems like a weekly basis. And these last two blowouts were particularly embarrassing, because they came at the hands of mediocre football teams, Pitt and Louisville.

Fans can stomach some losses -- especially when a team has deficiencies, which Florida State certainly does. What they can't live with is the notion that the players aren't being coached well, or that the players aren't following the lead of the head coach. Those are deal-breakers.