Dan Mullen is just 53 years old, and he’s already experienced the pressure-cooker that is college football coaching.
He did at the highest level, too, in the jungle that is the SEC, first with Mississippi State from 2009-17 and then at Florida right afterward from 2018-21. He did just fine at both stops, going 69-46 in Starkville and 34-15 in Gainesville. Those numbers are pretty solid, and after Mullen took a break from coaching to do a little college football broadcasting at ESPN the past 3 years, not many would’ve thought less of him had he decided to take a permanent break.
But that’s not what happened. What happened was the lure of the sidelines came calling for Mullen again, and last December he took the head coaching job at … UNLV? Yes, that’s right, the coach who was an SEC head coaching staple for more than a decade is now stationed out in Las Vegas, where he’ll try to make the UNLV football program matter.
So, what exactly could’ve happened to make Mullen step out of the broadcast booth and step back into the college football coaching world — at UNLV, of all places?
The lure was born at a 10-year reunion of his 2014 Mississippi State team, which was a pretty special team in Bulldogs football lore. That reunion last year made him start to think about coaching again. Then came Mullen’s attendance at the induction of former Utah quarterback Alex Smith into the National Football Foundation’s College Football Hall of Fame in — you guessed it — Las Vegas.
“When you have wives coming up saying you’ve made such an impact on my husband, it hits a note with you,” Mullen told CBS Sports.
Mullen was the quarterbacks coach at Utah in 2003 and 2004, with none other than Smith under his tutelage. While Mullen was in Las Vegas to attend Smith’s enshrinement, a phone call from UNLV athletic director Erick Harper lit the flame. He needed a head coach to replace Barry Odom, who had just left for Purdue after going 19-8 in 2 seasons at UNLV. Harper needed someone to keep the momentum going in Vegas, and Mullen and Harper had previously met at a golf event nearby.
Well, they stayed in touch, and that became really important.
“He went to my short list fairly quickly, because I saw him in a non-coaching capacity, which is always important to me,” Harper said.
Suddenly, there was a job offer from Harper, and a quick acceptance by Mullen.
“In the past, I would tell myself to find some reasons why I shouldn’t do this,” Mullen said. “For UNLV, I was trying to find reasons not to. The second I have to try to find a reason why I should be excited about this job, I don’t need it. This hit a lot of things.”
And now, Mullen hopes to hit the jackpot in Las Vegas after all those years in the SEC.
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.
