TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Not far from Gus Malzahn’s new office hangs a picture of Kelvin Benjamin hauling in a touchdown pass from Jameis Winston, the play that helped Florida State beat the 2013 Auburn Tigers — coached by Malzahn — in the national championship game that season.
It’s a daily reminder of Malzahn’s connection to the Seminoles.
“I’ve got to walk by the picture of the guy catching the ball as I go to the office every day,” Malzahn said Wednesday. “That was a real special game. There were a lot of great players on the field. It went down to the very end. It was probably entertaining or a great game to watch. It was tough, obviously, to be on the losing side.”
Malzahn is on the opposite side now. Two weeks ago, he resigned as head coach at the University of Central Florida after four seasons to become Mike Norvell’s offensive coordinator in Tallahassee. Their link goes back even further than Malzahn’s loss to the Seminoles in the final national title game under the BCS system before the College Football Playoff debuted as a four-team event the following season.
Malzahn, 59, said he chose to return to his coaching roots rather than remain a head coach distracted by new-age responsibilities. Malzahn walked away from $15 million guaranteed — he was set to make $5 million in 2025 and had three years remaining on his contract with the Knights — for a different coaching lifestyle. He signed a three-year deal with Florida State that will pay him $1.5 million in 2025.
“The job description of a head college football coach has changed dramatically in the last two years with everything — transfer portal to collectives to agents and everything that goes with that,” Malzahn said. “I’m just an old-school football coach.
“I love coaching football, and head coaches, it’s hard to do that a lot. So that had something to do with it. And then the opportunity and being familiar with Mike and having so much respect for this university, coached against this university in the national championship, I know what this place is capable of doing.”
Malzahn has been mostly successful during a career that began at an Arkansas high school and included head coaching stops at Arkansas State, Auburn and UCF. The Knights won nine games in 2021 and again in 2022 as members of the American Athletic Conference before making the jump to the power conference ranks and the Big 12, where they finished 6-7 overall last year and 4-8 this season.
Malzahn helped Auburn win the 2010 national title as an offensive coordinator and was a play or two away from winning another in 2013. Now he’s in Tallahassee to help turn around a storied program that has fallen on hard times as Norvell tries to reset going into the 2025 season, which will be his sixth with the Seminoles.
Malzahn was part of a Tulsa staff that hired Norvell as a graduate assistant in 2007. They didn’t work together very long but have remained close through the years.
Malzahn is now tasked with jump-starting an offense that was among the worst in the Football Bowl Subdivision this season, averaging 15.4 points and ranked 131st out of 134 schools, just a year after the Seminoles started 13-0 and won the Atlantic Coast Conference championship.
“I’m a big believer you’ve got to run the football downhill,” Malzahn said. “It makes everything better as far as pass protection, better on the quarterback, everything. … And we’ll get that done.”
Malzahn will replace Norvell as the team’s primary play caller for the offense.
“Our foundation on offense is from the same family,” Malzahn said. “He’s got his own wrinkles, and I’ve had my own wrinkles. But there is a lot more things that are in common. We still have the same terminology, the way we identify things like formations and player alignment, numbers.
“That’s why it’s a really, really easy transition. We’re going to play fast. I think that’s the No. 1 thing. We’re going to play fast.”