Dan Mullen met with Syracuse athletic director John Wildhack this week about the program’s vacant head coaching position, according to CNY Central’s Tommy Sladek.

Syracuse fired Dino Babers last Sunday after eight years with the program. According to Sladek, Mullen has become one of the top candidates on the board for the Orange.

Mullen worked as a grad assistant at Syracuse in 1998. He went to high school in New Hampshire and then played his college ball in Pennsylvania.

Mullen took over as the head coach at Mississippi State in 2009. In nine seasons, he went 69-46 with a 5-2 record in bowl games. The Bulldogs won nine games or more three times, including a 10-3 season in 2014 that ended in the Orange Bowl.

In 2018, Mullen took over the head job at Florida. He went 10-3 in Year 1 with a Peach Bowl win, then 11-2 in Year 2 with an Orange Bowl win. Mullen went 8-4 in 2020, then was fired after 11 games in 2021.

He has been out of coaching since. Mullen currently works for ESPN as a color analyst. On Friday, during the Miami-Boston College broadcast on ESPN, Matt Barrie asked Mullen in the booth about New Hampshire and then asked if there was anything “orange” that interested him. Mullen just laughed.