Dan Mullen describes his transfer portal approach at UNLV: ‘You can’t take everybody that is a ‘Last Chance U’ guy’
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Dan Mullen was a fixture as a head coach in the SEC for over a decade, first at Mississippi State and then at Florida from 2009-21.
The 53-year-old who’s resurfaced in the college world in 2025 at UNLV had his philosophy, and it involved luring a lot of JUCO and portal transfers to Starkville and Gainesville. That philosophy worked pretty well, too, as Mullen went 69-46 at Mississippi State and 34-15 at Florida. It didn’t end well at UF in 2021, but for Mullen that was the needed gateway to taking a sabbatical as an ESPN college football analyst for 3 years from 2022-24.
This fall, when Mullen leads the UNLV football team, he’ll be in a totally different world from where he left coaching, but he’ll be employing a similar philosophy. Before the transfer portal existed, he specialized in JUCO transfers helping his SEC programs. Now, smack in the middle of the transfer portal era, he’s brought a brigade of transfer talent to Sin City.
How does 16 former 4- or 5-star players at UNLV in 2025 sound? It sounds like Mullen, who talked to CBS Sports about his transfer philosophy coming to fruition at UNLV, which only returns 2 starters this fall, the fewest in the FBS.
No matter. The flock of players who either graduated or transferred when Barry Odom departed has been partially replenished by a wave of transfer talent. By this summer alone, the Rebels had signed 33 players with Power 4 Conference experience, which is astounding for a program like UNLV. That number grew to 37 former Power 4 players, which not surprisingly is more than double the next closest Mountain West program.
Those 4- and 5-star guys who’ve come to Vegas to play for Mullen won’t hurt, either, of course. Neither will the 21 newcomers from SEC and Big Ten schools alone, with 4 holdovers from Mullen’s time at Florida joining the potential party at UNLV.
“You can’t take everybody that is a ‘Last Chance U’ guy. You can’t have a roster where everybody hasn’t played much. You have to get the right combination. … The first question I ask guys is, ‘Why? Why did you get in the portal?’ I want to know your ‘why’ to see how you fit, not just as a talented player, but how your personality fits within our program,” explained Mullen to CBS Sports.
Soon, all that big-time talent will come together in the unlikely program in Las Vegas, and Mullen will see how it all blends to start his new coaching life.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
