Tom Herman accepted offensive analyst duties at Florida State for approximately $1.8 million annually, according to two people familiar with the contract. The former Texas head coach, who went 32-18 in Austin but was fired after the 2020 season, returns to college football four years after his head coaching career stalled. His last on-field role was as an offensive analyst with the Chicago Bears for $450,000 in 2022. He declined to comment Wednesday.
Florida State finished 2-10 last season after posting 13-1 the year prior. The offense ranked 121st nationally in scoring, down from 23rd in 2023. Offensive coordinator Alex Atkins departed for UAB in January. Head coach Mike Norvell moved DJ Uiagalelei to the bench in October, installed Luke Kromenhoek mid-season, and watched the Seminoles score more than 17 points only twice in conference play. The program missed a bowl for the first time since 2020. Herman's arrival fills the analyst vacancy left when Gus Malzahn moved to Florida State in December, though Herman's official title will be announced Friday.
The hire matters because Florida State still carries $85 million in athletic department debt service tied to facility upgrades completed in 2021. The department runs a structural deficit near $8 million annually, mitigated by donor contributions that spiked after the 2023 undefeated regular season. Last year's collapse cost FSU an estimated $12 million in bowl revenue and merchandise royalties. The Seminoles drew 72,400 per home game in 2023, then 61,200 in 2024. Season ticket renewals for 2025 are tracking 11 percent behind last cycle as of March 15, per two sources inside the Seminole Boosters organization. Norvell's seat is not warm—his contract runs through 2031 at $10 million per year—but the athletic director made clear in February that offensive stagnation will not repeat.
Herman's appeal is narrow but real. At Houston, he coordinated offenses that ranked 16th and 24th nationally in scoring before taking the head job and going 22-4 in two seasons. At Texas, his offense scored 35.6 points per game in 2018, then declined to 30.1 by 2020. He recruited well enough to sign four top-15 classes but lost four straight to Oklahoma and fired three coordinators in four years. His buyout cost Texas $15.4 million. The Bears hired him as an analyst in 2022 but did not renew for 2023. He spent 2023 and 2024 consulting privately with high school programs in California and meeting with NFL teams about openings that never materialized. One agent who represents SEC coordinators said Herman's value is "pattern recognition, not play-calling," and that his role at FSU will emphasize game-planning and situational strategy rather than live duties.
NBA agent Rich Paul wore a Seminoles cap courtside at the Lakers-Heat game in Miami on March 12. His agency represents defensive end Patrick Payton, who declared early for the 2025 NFL Draft. Paul sat two seats from Seminole Boosters chairman Michael Alford. The agency has not historically represented college football clients beyond draft prep, but Payton's camp used CAA's infrastructure for NIL deals last season. Alford declined to comment on recruiting strategy Wednesday.
Florida State opens fall camp August 1. The Seminoles play Georgia Tech on August 30 in Dublin for a reported $4.2 million payout split between the schools and the Aer Lingus Classic organizer. Norvell said in February he would not name a starting quarterback before camp. Kromenhoek transferred to Oregon State on March 10. Freshman Tramell Jones enrolled early and participated in spring ball. Herman's contract includes $250,000 in performance bonuses tied to offensive efficiency benchmarks, per one person who reviewed the term sheet. Those targets have not been disclosed.
The offensive coordinator search closed Wednesday when Norvell promoted Chris Thomsen from tight ends coach. Thomsen has never called plays at the FBS level. Herman will sit in the booth.
The takeaway
FSU pays Herman **$1.8M** to fix an offense that cost the program **$12M** last season while renewals lag **11 percent**.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori Press · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.