Florida State hasn’t been “normal” in the world of college athletics for a long time.

Having a legendary head football coach for 34 years, overlapping with a legendary head baseball coach who was at the helm for 40. A women’s basketball coach staying on for a quarter-century. A men’s basketball coach who recently cruised right past 20 years. And a slew of other head coaches who have been in place for more than a decade.

It’s wonderful in many ways, but it's not normal.

All universities want to consider themselves “destination” jobs, but there might not be another school that wears that title – across as many different sports – as well as Florida State.

That’s part of what made the two bombshell departures the past two weeks so shocking for Seminoles everywhere.

FSU didn’t just lose two incredibly successful head coaches in Mark Krikorian and Sue Semrau; the Seminoles said goodbye to two institutions.

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In his 17 seasons in Tallahassee, Krikorian led the Seminoles to three national championships and 11 trips to the College Cup (soccer’s Final Four). He took a program that had only been in existence for 10 years before he arrived and elevated it into arguably the best in the sport.

Semrau took over a women’s basketball team that had gone 5-22 the year before she arrived and turned it into a national power. Over the last 15-plus years, they have become a perennial NCAA Tournament team and have made a bunch of trips to the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight.

So these are both tremendous losses.

Semrau and Krikorian are giants in their respective sports.

The fact that they announced they were leaving within nine days of each other, and with FSU’s new athletics director, Michael Alford, only being on the job for a few months, it’s understandable why many fans are wondering what in the heck is going on inside the Moore Athletics Center.

Some immediately speculated that the departures are related. They wondered if it’s a signal that FSU is no longer making a commitment to sports other than football -- particularly women's sports.

While I would argue the answers to both of those questions is no, we probably need to delve deeper into each situation to get a clearer understanding of what happened, where things stand right now, and where they might be heading in the future.

Let’s start with Semrau.

After taking a year off to be with her mother, who was battling cancer in Seattle, Semrau talked openly last summer about returning to her position with a new approach. She wanted to delegate more responsibilities to her staff, and take more time to focus on other aspects of her program – and her family life – without being so narrowly focused on wins and losses.

It didn’t work the way she hoped. That work-life balance was extremely difficult to achieve. And after a 17-14 season, which ended with the thud of ugly defeats in the ACC and NCAA tournaments, Semrau decided it was time to step away.

She is not going to coach another team. She did not seem to have a disagreement with the administration. At the age of 60, she now simply wants to move on to the next chapter of her life.

And based on everything that Semrau has said – and what we’ve heard from talking to other people – this was a decision she would have made no matter what FSU’s administration did or didn’t do.

Now, the Krikorian situation is a slightly different story.

It didn’t take a sleuth to figure out this was not an amicable divorce.

I’ve been in this business for about 30 years now, and I can’t recall seeing a college coach of any stature – let alone one of Mark Krikorian’s – announce his own resignation without going through the school’s communications staff. Yet that’s exactly what Krikorian did on Tuesday when he sent an email to me, Gene, Corey and about a dozen other FSU media types.

In that message, he thanked the people who hired him 17 years ago – Dave Hart and Kim Record – legendary football coach Bobby Bowden and longtime athletics administrator Monk Bonasorte, both of whom passed in recent years, and others in the FSU community.

He did not mention a soul in the current administration.

Then on Thursday, several of the Seminoles’ soccer players posted this message on social media making note of, “The circumstances that led to Mark’s resignation.”

So if anyone out there hadn’t clued in yet that this was a messy breakup, they certainly know now.

But what was it all about? That's what everyone wants to better understand.

In his resignation email, Krikorian said his decision, “is not based on money,” and credited FSU with offering him a “generous contract.”

From everything I have been told, that is true. That Krikorian’s contract was up, and that the university offered him a raise – on top of the $450,000 he was already making each year – and that he still turned it down. Despite not having another job or career opportunity lined up.

So that doesn’t necessarily back up the theory that FSU isn’t committed to sports other than football.

Krikorian was already reportedly the highest-paid soccer coach in the country – which was well-deserved. And they were offering him even more -- which also was well-deserved.

Was it not enough? Would he have signed a new deal if the school offered even more money? Maybe. But after talking with several people with knowledge of the situation, I really don’t think that was the case.

The impression I get is this was a multi-layered conflict.

For starters, like virtually all coaches, Krikorian had several facility improvements he wanted to see addressed – beyond the new video board, which is said to be coming soon. I’ve been told he wanted the playing surface to be improved, and he desired several additional amenities for the team and for the fans.

While that doesn’t seem unreasonable given the soccer team's success, the challenge in these situations is often coming to an agreement on how long it will take to raise the funds, and how these discussions are handled.

I believe this is where things fell apart.

While I can’t get into who is right or wrong because most of what I’ve been told is from people who are loyal to one side or the other – to Krikorian or to the FSU administration – the bottom line is there was a breakdown in the relationship. Multiple sources say Krikorian felt he was led to believe the improvements were coming, and then they weren’t. Or at least not as soon as he expected.

And Mark Krikorian is not a shrinking violet. If he's not happy, he's going to make that abundantly clear -- like virtually every successful coach at this level.

Ultimately that led to confrontation, frustration and a loss of trust and respect. And neither side was either willing or able to repair that damage.

From an outsider’s perspective, it’s difficult to believe that something couldn’t have been worked out. That either Alford and the administration couldn’t have put a facilities plan together that satisfied Krikorian, or that he couldn’t have put some of his frustrations aside and kept pushing for improvements down the road.

That there couldn't have been a reasonable solution to all of this.

I completely understand the frustration of Krikorian’s supporters and the disappointment of FSU soccer fans. You have a program that is the best in the nation, and you feel there’s no way the school should just let Krikorian walk away.

On the other hand, I know this is a challenging time for athletics departments everywhere. The money that can be made in football is so substantial that the quest to improve those programs can become all-consuming. Especially at Florida State, where the football program has been down for several years.

And it’s no secret that FSU has made a concerted effort to invest more heavily in football this offseason. A slew of additional support staff members have been hired for newly created positions, the team just got a renovated locker room, and every effort is being made to break ground on a new football operations center in the coming months.

FSU is clearly doing everything it can to help Mike Norvell succeed.

With that as a backdrop, there is bound to be a little added frustration for coaches in other sports – if they feel their requests are sitting on the bottom of the pile, while football gets one request approved after another.

At the same time, the coaches have to know the deal. They have to understand that their budgets are going to be hurt every time football revenue drops. So they can’t be too upset about seeing the administration place a greater emphasis on turning around that program.

Success in football is the lifeblood of the entire athletics department.

But it’s a difficult balance, and it often leads to difficult conversations.

Every coach is going to push and push and push for more resources for his or her program. That’s part of their job – advocating for their athletes and their team.

It’s the administration’s job to make an honest effort to assess those requests and prioritize them based on needs and available funds.

The challenge for an athletics director is doing what is best for the overall department and sometimes making difficult decisions – decisions that the coaches don’t agree with – but communicating them in a way that leave the coaches feeling respected and valued.

Sometimes that’s easier said than done, especially when egos and strong personalities are involved.

I thought it was telling that Krikorian mentioned Monk Bonasorte in his email. As most anyone reading this knows, Bonasorte was the person who had a way of smoothing over most of these conflicts during his years in the FSU athletics department.

As a former player, he understood the way coaches think. He was the one person in the athletics department that even Jimbo Fisher would listen to (at times!). But Bonasorte also always kept in mind the bigger picture of what was best for the overall athletics department. And he had a way of making everyone feel as if they were respected and that their sports would be treated fairly.

Bonasorte died after a battle with cancer in 2016, and Fisher left one year later.

I can’t help but think Monk would have found a way to keep Krikorian and the FSU administration on the same page.

Maybe not. There’s no way to know for sure.

What we do know is that Mark Krikorian is arguably the best coach this university has ever seen – the creator of a dynasty of a soccer program – and he has walked away with his program on top of the sport.

That would be a bitter pill for fans of any school to swallow, but particularly for fans of Florida State, where coaches typically stay until they retire.

As stated earlier, I’m not in a position to judge right or wrong in this case. None of us can. I’d like to think Alford could have kept Krikorian happy, but I also would like to think Krikorian could have managed his frustrations and kept a great thing going.

At the end of the day, though, that’s easy for me to say. I’m not the one pouring every ounce of energy I have into building and maintaining the country’s best soccer program. And I don’t know exactly where this relationship fell apart.

Regardless, this obviously isn’t the way Alford hoped to begin his tenure as FSU's athletics director. Three months into the job and losing his most successful coach in an ugly breakup.

It won’t necessarily define his tenure. The reality is he likely will be judged more by what happens with football – as is the case with most Power 5 athletics directors – than anything else.

But it is a data point. It’s the first time FSU fans have seen Alford have to handle a difficult situation, and this is how it went.

It’s not normal for coaches to leave Florida State on top. (Fisher didn’t even do that. The Seminoles were a game under .500 when he left late in the 2017 season.)

As we said at the beginning, it’s actually not normal for Seminoles to have to say goodbye to coaches at all.

So this one stings for a lot of reasons. And FSU fans certainly don’t want to think this is their new normal.

Contact managing editor Ira Schoffel at ira@warchant.com and follow @IraSchoffel on Twitter.

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Talk about this story with other Florida State football fans in the Tribal Council