The question never came, but it was the elephant alligator in the room, clearly on Dan Mullen’s mind.

At a place like Florida, it’s an offseason question that’s ever-present, asked the day after signing day until the day before opening day, around water coolers, in living rooms and dining rooms, in studies and on sundecks.

How fast?

How quickly can Dan Mullen transform a Florida program coming off its second losing season in four years back into a perennial contender for the SEC and national championship?

Vince Lombardi was a great fan of the saying “Winning is a habit,” and it was legendary Florida coach Steve Spurrier who added, “Unfortunately, so is losing” to the maxim. Dan Mullen inherited a toxic culture at Florida, one that has grown too accustomed to mediocrity. How fast that culture is fixed will define the answer to how fast Mullen can turn the program around.

“Evaluating Florida, I looked at the last four years,” Dan Mullen told a packed house in Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon at his 10th SEC Media Days, though first as the Gators’ head coach.

“In the last four years, they’ve had two 4-win seasons and played for two SEC Championships. That tells me that individual teams have performed at a high level, but the program itself is not performing at the level it should be. There has been talent. There are good players. There is also a lack of consistency in performance, which speaks to the program as a whole: whether the problem is confidence, training, discipline, culture, development — or, I think, all of the above. When the program is consistent, you can win championships. That’s where we want to be.”

"This season’s goal is to compete for a championship and play (in Atlanta) the first weekend of December. But the main goal is to build a program and become a consistent championship contender."
-- Florida head coach Dan Mullen

For Mullen, this SEC Media Days was about outlining a vision for Florida’s program, now that he’s had a winter, spring and summer to take inventory of what he inherited and the season to come.

“This season’s goal is to compete for a championship and play (in Atlanta) the first weekend of December,” Mullen said. “But the main goal is to build a program and become a consistent championship contender.”

Of course, Mullen wants to win immediately, and having won two national championships at Florida as an offensive coordinator under Urban Meyer, he’s well-aware of the lofty expectations that come with being the head coach at Florida. It’s part of why he wanted the job.

“Florida is a high-pressure job, but I love that about it,” Mullen said. “I have extremely high expectations for myself and the program. That’s pressure I wanted.”

Florida fans aren’t famous for patience, and with a roster stocked with excellent talent at the skill positions and on defense, the pieces are in place for the Gators to potentially surprise in Year 1. Mullen understands this.

“Having been at the University of Florida before and having won multiple championships there, I know what can be achieved and what the expectation is there,” Mullen said.

But Mullen also spent most of his first SEC Media Days press conference as Florida’s head coach making the critical point that this season, more than anything, is about laying a foundation for a future that can meet that standard.

Laying the foundation is about buy-in: to a coaching staff, a program, a culture and a process, not just a season.

Once upon a time, Florida’s culture was the envy of the SEC, dragging a 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust parochial backwater of a conference into its golden era with high-octane offense and championship swagger. Whether it was Spurrier in charge or Meyer, The Swamp was a place to be feared and the Gators were a force to be reckoned with.

Mullen was part of that proud tradition as an offensive coordinator but arrives as HBC in Gainesville with the program at its nadir.

Florida has had two 4-win seasons since 2014. Florida hasn’t had a functional offense since most college students were in elementary school. The program hasn’t contended for a national championship since 2012. They haven’t been beaten Florida State since 2012 either, and haven’t even been competitive against the Seminoles since 2014. The Swamp, once an impregnable fortress where “only Gators get out alive” (the Gators lost there 5 times in the 1990s), has become an exceedingly vulnerable building, with too many empty seats and plenty of Gators losses (15 this decade alone). Florida had more players suspended for the 2017 season (9) than it had drafted (5).

In other words, it’s a long way back to the mountaintop.

Mullen has seen the view on the other side, however. And he has built something from scratch, having taken Mississippi State from a program with two bowl appearances this century when he arrived to one that held a No. 1 ranking for a month in 2014 and appeared in eight consecutive bowl games under his watch from 2010-2017.

He’s a builder, and Tuesday, he seemed eager to get to work.

“What I’ve learned after a decade in the SEC is that the margin for error is very small,” Mullen said. “You better have coaches and players that are invested in the day-to-day, in the culture, in playing to the Gator standard.”

He thinks the trio of leaders he brought with him to Atlanta — junior linebacker David Reese and seniors Martez Ivey and Cece Jefferson — are players who are invested, who can set the standard for others to follow.

“The guys that came with me today … have seen the program at highs and lows,” Mullen said. “They have a lot of pride in the program and experiences in the program. Guys look up to them, they’ve played in SEC Championship Games and played in big games. They have bought in, but need to continue to set the standard.”

Whether they do will go a long way in determining whether if Year 1 under Dan Mullen gives us a hint as to “how fast” Florida football will matter nationally again.