In the hallways of the older buildings at my school (that aren't there anymore), the 2x F32T8 (retrofitted) wraparounds were plagued with horrible lamp life and often really hot but dim EOLs. The tubes would just go dim and red but then below the ends the cover would start to deform and it would actually like form a drip of plastic.

Is this normal EOL behavior?

Yes, when the ballast is able to support the excessive voltage drop and does not shut down.
Failing cathode leads to high cathode drop so high power dissipation, so general overheating in that area. This then leads to slow lamp[ leak and oxygen poisoning, leading to the purple color.
It depends on the ballast, how far is it able to maintain the arc current and whether it has any EOL detection and shut down.
Good quality modern ballasts do not allow this condition for more than few seconds, but many early electronic ballasts were lacking any form of EOL protection so may drive the lamps in this dangerous manner.
Because of the long lamp life, it took a few years of these ballast being sold till these problems were recognized as a real safety issue, so there is huge amount of ballasts in the field that are lacking any form of protection, the early designs were just made so robust this condition did not destroyed the ballasts alone, but the lamp socket area overheating and consequent fire risk was neglected.