Las Vegas – Dan Mullen could have returned to training earlier, but the timing never seemed fair and, whatever, it remained well in ESPN giving its ideas on the last people of university football.
But when coach Barry Odom, fresh, taking aLV consecutive appearances In the Mountain West league match, Left for Purdue In December, this time felt different.
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Now, the former Mississippi and Florida state coach is back on the sidelines supervise the rebelswhich started spring training on Thursday.
“He was making television for three years and you want to know if this fire is still in his belly,” said Erick Harper, sports director of UNLV. “The first conversation, you could say. The more we talk, the more you could feel the fire in his belly to come back to the field and do what he likes to do.”
Mullen was first impressed by the UNLV while he was in Las Vegas in 2023 to attend the induction of the fame of university football in the former Florida quarter. He could not believe the Fertitta football complex of $ 35 million which opened its doors in 2019 and knew that the rebels spent Gamedays in an NFL stadium.
“This (practice) establishment was so much better than everything I had when I took the work of the state of Mississippi,” said Mullen. “I had to build the installation there. Florida was not like it. Not even near that. “
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ALV, during most of its history, was a rehabilitation project. Then Odom came and showed in his two seasons that the program could not only win, but compete for the conference championships and even reach the door of the university football playoffs.
Mullen’s reputation as an offensive brain was the reason why it was hired to keep the rebels at this new level.
As an offensive coordinator of Florida under Urban Meyer, he helped to help Gators win two national championships. Mullen went 69-46 as a Mississippi state-acting from 2009 to 17, the Bulldogs appearing in bowls in all his first season. He then recorded a brand of 34-15 in four seasons in Florida which included an appearance in the Southeast Conference Championship in 2020.
Meyer saw early that Mullen had the ability to be a prosperous head coach, their relationship dating back to 1999 and 2000 to Notre Dame. Mullen was a graduate assistant and Meyer the Wide Receiver Coach.
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“He was a guy who challenged and wanted to know each exercise, a reason why we made everything to the point that it was almost annoying,” said Meyer. “His intellect, not just in football, is extremely high. His football intellect is as good as ever.”
Meyer was so impressed by Mullen, he took him with him when he became a head coach of Bowling Green in 2001, then in Utah two years later. Although Mullen was officially the quarter coach in the two programs, Meyer said that he was the offensive coordinator because the two combined to go 39-8 in four seasons.
“He was too young to have this title, in my opinion, because he did not yet have the ability to stand in front of a room,” said Meyer. “I knew he would develop it, but his work was much more important than the quarter of the quarter.”
When Meyer took Mullen to Florida in 2005, this time it was like his attacking coordinator, believing that he had experience at this stage to play such an important role.
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But they had to face many skeptics that the propagation offense which reached an average of around 500 yards at UTAH the previous year would be able to move the ball at a similar rate against the defenses of the dry.
“They called this a gadget,” said Meyer. “There is no chance that it will work in the robust dry. We certainly had to adapt our first games. ”
They did it, winning the national titles of 2006 and 2008 which prompted other programs to adopt their own versions of the propagation offense. This put in the 2008 championship that Mullen informed Meyer that he could take the Mississippi State post. The Bulldogs were such a disaster in Meyer’s mind that he quickly forgot that Mullen was even interested.
Until Mullen lets him know that he was leaving for Starkville.
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The Bulldogs finished with winning records in all the seasons of Mullen, except two, which led to a return to Florida and to a team which went 4-7 in 2017. But Mullen went 29-9 in his first three years, ending at least n ° 13 each season.
Unlv, on the surface, does not seem to be a reconstruction work given his recent success. The rebels, however, must replace several key starters who include the Large Ricky White III receiver and the second Jackson Woodard, players who could hear their names called in the NFL recovery at the end of April.
Mullen returns to coaching when the lists are built over one year to another due to the transfer portal as well as the appeal of the name, image and resemblance in the biggest programs. What has essentially become the free university agency was not really one thing in its previous coaching round.
“There was the program and then this year’s team, and perhaps this is reversed in today’s university football,” said Mullen. “There is this year’s team, then the program.”
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Mullen, 52, was able to see these changes of more distance as a television analyst, which, according to him, gave him a new perspective because he did not have to integrate them into the daily milling of a program management.
Now Mullen is back in the game – and with something to prove.
After this initial success in Florida, the Gators experienced a slowdown in 2021 by going 5-6 before Mullen was dismissed with two games.
“I don’t like how it ended in Florida,” said Mullen. “I don’t want it to end my career. If it was. So. But I go out in the world of coaches, maybe it may have a little different from the last.”
