Ex-Florida coach Dan Mullen drags former program while touting his own success
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Dan Mullen is now the head coach of UNLV Football. Once upon a time, he was one of the hottest coaches on the market, leading Mississippi State from 2009 through 2017 and then Florida from 2018 through 2021. He was fired midway through the 2021 campaign, and the Gators have struggled since. Now, Florida is hoping to rebound under new head coach Jon Sumrall.
Meanwhile, Mullen is throwing some shade at his old program, per Nick Schultz of On3.
“We won a lot of games,” Mullen said. “But you know what? In today’s world, when you’re when you’re at premier schools, you expect to win. At Florida, they expect championships. I was at Florida as an assistant coach who won two national titles. That’s the standard. That was the standard when I got there. We got to an SEC championship game, fell a couple points short to Alabama. But our standard from the day I got there was championships. We weren’t able to come through, even though we fell a couple points short of winning the SEC Championship, and going to compete for national championships.”
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Mullen did recognize his shortcomings. He followed Urban Meyer from Utah to Florida, winning a national championship with him in 2006 and 2008. He never led Florida to a national title, but he wonders if things would have looked different in the 12-team playoff era.
“And I think maybe if the Playoff era was around, I think three out of my four years, we would have made the College Football Playoff. Maybe that would have looked a little bit different back then with the resume, of keeping me around a little bit longer to try to try to go win that national title. But hey, it is what it is. Probably hasn’t gone as well there since I left, it doesn’t seem like.”
Mullen may be right on one accord. His 2018 Florida team won the Peach Bowl, then a New Year’s Six bowl, and would have made the playoffs. The same was true the next year when they won the Orange Bowl. The 2020 team was 8-2 before the SEC championship, and lost by just six to Alabama. With a win, they would have been in the four-team playoff and likely would have made the 12-team playoff. The only miss would have been the 2021 season, when Florida finished 6-7, but he was fired when the team was 5-6.
Overall, Mullen was 34-16 and played in three New Year’s Six Bowls. Meanwhile, Florida is just 23-27 since then, has played in the Las Vegas Bowl and Gasparilla Bowl, and has become an afterthought in the SEC.
Florida is hoping to make a run in 2026 to get back to relevancy under a coach who led Tulane to the playoffs last year. Meanwhile, Mullen hopes to improve on his runner-up finish at UNLV in the Mountain West and make the playoffs there.
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