LAS VEGAS — Dan Mullen could’ve returned to coaching sooner, but the timing never seemed right and, regardless, he was fine remaining at ESPN giving his insights about the latest in college football.
But when coach Barry Odom, fresh off taking UNLV to back-to-back appearances in the Mountain West championship game, left for Purdue in December, this time felt different.
Now, the former Mississippi State and Florida coach is back on the sidelines overseeing the Rebels, who began spring practices Thursday.
“He was doing TV for three years and you want to know if that fire’s still in his belly,” UNLV athletic director Erick Harper said. “The first conversation, you could tell. The more we talked, the more you could feel the fire in his belly to get back out on the field and do what he loves to do.”
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Mullen first became impressed with UNLV while in Las Vegas in 2023 to attend former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow’s College Football Hall of Fame induction. He couldn’t believe the $35 million Fertitta Football Complex that opened in 2019 and knew the Rebels spent game days at an NFL stadium.
“This [practice] facility was so much better than anything I had when I took the Mississippi State job,” Mullen said. “I had to build the facility there. Florida had nothing like this. Not even close to this.”
UNLV, for most of its history, has been a reclamation project. Then Odom came along and showed in his two seasons that the program could not only win, but compete for conference championships and even reach the doorstep of the College Football Playoff.
Mullen’s reputation as an offensive mastermind was the reason he was hired to keep the Rebels at that newfound level.
As Florida’s offensive coordinator under Urban Meyer, he was instrumental in helping the Gators win two national championships. Mullen went 69-46 as Mississippi State’s head coach from 2009-17, the Bulldogs appearing in bowls in all but his first season. He then recorded a 34-15 mark over four seasons at Florida that included a Southeastern Conference championship appearance in 2020.
Meyer saw early that Mullen possessed the ability to be a successful head coach, their relationship tracing back to 1999 and 2000 at Notre Dame. Mullen was a graduate assistant and Meyer the wide receivers coach.
“He was a guy that challenged and wanted to know every drill, a reason we did everything to the point it was almost annoying,” Meyer said. “His intellect, not just in football, is extremely high. His football intellect is as good as I’ve ever been around.”
Meyer was so impressed with Mullen, he took him with him when he became Bowling Green’s head coach in 2001 and then to Utah two years later. Though Mullen was officially the quarterbacks coach at both programs, Meyer said in reality he was the offensive coordinator as both teams combined to go 39-8 in four seasons.
“He was too young to have that title, in my opinion, because he didn’t have the ability to stand in front of a room yet,” Meyer said. “I knew he would develop it, but his job was much more important than just quarterback coach.”
When Meyer took Mullen to Florida in 2005, this time it was as his offensive coordinator, believing he had the experience at this point to take on such a prominent role.
But they faced plenty of doubters that the spread offense that averaged about 500 yards at Utah the year before would be able to move the ball at a similar rate against SEC defenses.
“They called it a gimmick offense,” Meyer said. “There’s no chance this will work in the rugged SEC. We certainly had to adapt things our first few games.”
They did indeed do that, winning the 2006 and 2008 national titles that prompted other programs to adopt their own versions of the spread offense. It was leading up to the 2008 championship that Mullen informed Meyer he might take the Mississippi State job. The Bulldogs were such a disaster in Meyer’s mind that he soon forgot Mullen was even interested.
Until Mullen let him know he was leaving for Starkville.
The Bulldogs finished with winning records in all but two of Mullen’s seasons, which led to a return to Florida and a team that went 4-7 in 2017. But then Mullen went 29-9 over his first three years, finishing at least No. 13 each season.
UNLV, on the surface, doesn’t appear to be a rebuilding job given its recent success. The Rebels, however, must replace several key starters that include wide receiver Ricky White III and linebacker Jackson Woodard, players who could hear their names called at the NFL draft later this month.
Mullen returns to coaching when rosters are constructed on more of a year-to-year basis anyway because of the transfer portal as well as the lure of name, image and likeness dollars at larger programs. What has essentially become college free agency wasn’t much of a thing in his previous turn at coaching.
“There was the program and then this year’s team, and maybe that’s flipped in today’s college football,” Mullen said. “There’s this year’s team and then the program.”
Mullen, 52, got to see those changes from more of a distance as a TV analyst, which he said gave him a fresh outlook because he didn’t have to incorporate them into the daily grind of running a program.
Now, Mullen is back in the game – and with something to prove.
After that initial success at Florida, the Gators had a downturn in 2021 in going 5-6 before Mullen was fired with two games left.
“I don’t like how it ended in Florida,” Mullen said. “I wouldn’t want that to finish off my career. If it was, it was. However I walk out the door in the coaching world, maybe it has a little different finish to the last one.”
