Why Dan Mullen left his cushy ESPN gig for the UNLV HC job

Dan Mullen had it made in the shade as a college football analyst at ESPN, but he’s now decided to get back to the grind of being a college football head coach.

Mullen was hired by the UNLV Rebels in December, ending a three-year stint of his that saw him as a prominent analyst on television.

He had a decently successful head coaching career with stops at Mississippi State and Florida, but he had also been making a name for himself as an analyst at ESPN. That’s still a tough gig, but being on television talking about football is far less of a stressful situation than the constant grind college football coaches have to go through.

So why did Mullen leave his cushy life? Almost as big of a question is why did he choose UNLV of the Mountain West as a former SEC football coach?

Recently speaking on “CFB with DP” with David Pollack, Mullen explained his decision. In fact, he had to explain it to his wife as well.

“As my wife said, when we retired with this kind of good TV job, living at Reynolds on Lake Oconee,” And she’s like, ‘Yeah, and now we’re packing up and moving the family to Las Vegas.’ She’s like, ‘You’ve turned down a lot of jobs, you’ve gotten a lot of calls, why this one?'” Mullen said (h/t On3). “I just — again, looking at the makeup of today’s college football world, and I’ve always thought UNLV is a sleeping giant, I really have. You have a great city. There’s football talent here in the city of Las Vegas. It’s a four-hour drive to Phoenix, three-hour drive to LA. You can draw that circle where kids can get here and you have a great recruiting area to go get players. You have a city that offers everything.”

The Rebels went 11-3 last season under Barry Odom before he was hired away by Purdue. In Mullen, UNLV is getting an experienced SEC coach with a 103-61 overall record and a 7-3 bowl record. Things didn’t quite end the way he wanted them to at Florida, but he did have two 10-plus win seasons with the Gators and he always had a competitive team at Mississippi State.

Perhaps his addition to this “sleeping giant” known as UNLV will help the Rebels get over the top in the MWC and make a run to the College Football Playoff.