To my surprise, Zach Arnett sought me out following the first game that he coached after the death of Mike Leach.

It was at the ReliaQuest Bowl, wherein we watched the new era of Mississippi State football begin with a fitting defensive struggle. Arnett had never conducted a postgame press conference prior to the one he held that day in Tampa. As a first-time head coach, the idea of having reporters talk over each other to ask the head coach a question was new to him.

So after he saw me give way to other reporters to fire off a question on several occasions — he eventually singled me out to make sure I got one in — he addressed me in the postgame tunnel of Raymond James Stadium. To my astonishment, he apologized to me. In a surprising turn of events, he felt guilty that I couldn’t get a word in, which I assured him wasn’t a big deal and that it was just a byproduct of my beta personality.

“Chivalry isn’t dead,” Arnett told me with a laugh.

Less than a year after Arnett made his head coaching debut, he was fired at Mississippi State. Chivalry would’ve given him a Year 2 following the awkward circumstances he inherited after he was promoted from defensive coordinator to full-time head coach 11 months ago.

Arnett was the second-youngest Power 5 head coach, and at 37 years old, he was the youngest full-time SEC coach since 34-year-old Lane Kiffin spent 1 year coaching Tennessee. Ironic, it is, that neither got a Year 2. Of course, Arnett isn’t leaving on his own terms as Kiffin did. He’s out not because of his character or his understanding of defensive football — it feels like a given that Arnett will have a Power 5 defensive coordinator job if he wants one — but because Mississippi State is in jeopardy of missing its first bowl game since 2009.

It was in 2009 that another 37-year-old got his first head coaching opportunity in Starkville.

Arnett’s firing begs the question — could 51-year-old Dan Mullen get another head coaching opportunity in Starkville?

It’s worth asking for a few reasons. Let’s start with the Mississippi State side. Offensively, the Bulldogs are in the toilet. It was always going to be difficult to transition from the Leach Air Raid, but to say that the Kevin Barbay offense flopped would be an understatement. Heading into Week 12, Mississippi State ranks:

  • No. 124 in 3rd-down conversion percentage
  • No. 110 in passing yards/game
  • No. 108 in scoring
  • No. 102 in QB rating
  • No. 102 in 20-yard plays
  • No. 100 in yards/pass
  • No. 85 in yards/play

Not only does Mississippi State have the worst scoring offense in the SEC at 21.4 points per game, but that number actually drops to 13.4 points per game against SEC foes.

Whoever Mississippi State hires to replace Arnett has to have some serious offensive chops. Maybe that’s someone like Liberty’s Jamey Chadwell, who is leading the undefeated Flames in Year 1 after he went 31-6 in his final 3 seasons at Coastal Carolina. Someone like Jonathan Smith, who has been a revelation at his alma mater Oregon State but is staring at conference realignment issues with the soon-to-be-dead Pac-12, could be a target.

Or, perhaps, Mississippi State could hire a current ESPN college football analyst who might be the best offensive schemer in the sport. Like, the guy who spent 9 years in Starkville and is No. 2 in the program’s all-time wins list.

Obviously, there’s no guarantee that Mullen would be willing to do that. He spent the past 2 years away from coaching. In the fall, Mullen’s current role at ESPN is calling Thursday night games with Matt Barrie and working as an in-studio analyst all day on Saturdays. The rest of the year, Mullen enjoyed a quiet life at Lake Oconee. In addition to days spent on their boat, the Mullen family traveled to London and Paris.

I bring that up because I asked Mullen in August what he’d do if he got a text from his agent saying that there was an NFL opportunity — unrelated to Mississippi State — that would be appealing.

“Ya know, I don’t know. I kinda enjoy the TV lifestyle right now,” Mullen said on The Saturday Down South Podcast. “You’re in the game. I really enjoyed (2022) … I don’t know if I’ll head back to coaching anytime soon. You never say never in this world. You never say never.”

It would be foolish for Mississippi State, which has had 3 coaches in the 6 seasons since Mullen left for the Florida job, to say “never” to its No. 2 all-time winningest coach. It remains to be seen how first-year athletic director Zac Selmon will approach the hire. He came on board after Arnett was promoted to full-time head coach, so it’s not as if there’s some soured relationship between Selmon and Mullen.

There’s definitely not a soured relationship between Mullen and Mississippi State, either.

“I love Starkville,” Mullen told me in August. “If you had to associate me with coaching somewhere, you say, ‘Hey, what is your school that you coached at?’ I’d say ‘Mississippi State.’ That would be the school that I would claim.”

Spend enough time talking with Mullen at this stage of his life and you’ll see he has a different perspective than the one he had when he left Mississippi State for Florida after the 2017 season.

The timing of the move was a surprise externally and internally. Earlier in the offseason, I caught up with one of Mullen’s most decorated diamond-in-the-rough quarterbacks Nick Fitzgerald, who said that he thought the 2018 team would’ve been historic if Mullen had stayed 1 more year.

“That was definitely a possibility,” Mullen said in August. “That team was loaded. Had a lot of great players. A phenomenal defense. At Mississippi State, one of the things we had gotten to was we’d win consistently, and then every couple of years, we’d have an opportunity to compete for a championship … it’s hard because we got the program to a place where people said, ‘We want to compete for a championship every single year.’ There are very few schools out there that I think can do that, that every single year, you should expect to minimally be in a New Year’s 6 bowl.”

Mullen continued.

“One of the things I thought about, was I had brought Mississippi State to this great level of being a regular consistent winner with a chance to compete,” Mullen said. “If I was gonna leave, I was leaving the program in great position. Ya know, I’m leaving it much better than when I found it in every aspect of things … if I had stayed 1 more year, I think I had brought the program as far as I was gonna bring it. Personally, I was ready for a new challenge at that point.”

Perhaps the question now is whether Mullen is ready for a new challenge. Or rather, if he and Mississippi State would be ready to revisit an old challenge.

There’s no guarantee that Mullen wants to get back into the year-round recruiting calendar, or that he’d be willing to do that in the expanded SEC that just added 2 more traditional powers. There’s also no guarantee that Mississippi State would be willing to bring a head coach back who admittedly felt that he took the program as far as it could go before leaving for another job.

Alternatively, maybe chivalry isn’t dead.