Gators head coach Dan Mullen is greeted by Athletic Director Scott Stricklin when he touched down in Gainesville in late November after nine seasons as head coach at Mississippi State. (Photo: Tim Casey/UAA Communications)
Time for Another Reintroduction to Dan Mullen
Friday, August 31, 2018 | Football, Scott Carter
At first, Mullen surfaced on the radar as a relative unknown in the late fall of 2004, the offensive coordinator for the hottest up-and-coming head coach in the country at the time, Utah's Urban Meyer. When Meyer emerged as the No. 1 target of then-Gators Athletic Director Jeremy Foley, Mullen emerged as the man whose job it would be to run the offense, casting him immediately into the cross hairs of touchdown-loving Florida fans.
In four years as UF's offensive coordinator, the Gators won a pair of national championships, quarterback Tim Tebow won a Heisman Trophy and Mullen basked in the spotlight as one of the young bright coaching stars in the college game.
Mullen's success at Florida led to him being named head coach at Mississippi State, where suddenly, he became a Southeastern Conference rival and instant enemy. He lost to Tebow and the Gators in his first season in Starkville, but the next year, Mullen's Bulldogs spoiled the Gators' homecoming in 2010 with a victory at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
That was Mullen's last game at the Swamp.
Eight years later, Mullen's latest reincarnation has him back on the home sideline on Saturday night in his debut as Florida's head coach.
"He's come a long way,'' said Steve Gilbert, Mullen's coach at Ursinus College, a small private liberal arts school in Collegeville, Pa. "I'm very proud of him. Nobody has followed his career more closely than maybe I have. I see how he has really matured. He is ready for the Florida job. I think his time at Mississippi State has really allowed him to mature and feel comfortable as a head coach."
Since the moment the 46-year-old Mullen touched ground nine months ago when Scott Stricklin, who replaced Foley in November 2016 and worked with Mullen at Mississippi State, plucked him from Starkville to return to UF, Mullen has worked tirelessly to reintroduce himself to Gator Nation.
First, he had to change the culture of the program.
How long did that take?
"When he first stepped in,'' starting safety Jeawon Taylor said. "He's just brought a new energy to the team. I can tell he's a great coach. He brought Mississippi State from nothing. And we're Florida, so I know he's going to bring a lot to the table."
The younger and brasher Mullen who departed town nine years earlier returned for what he calls a "dream job" with a different perspective. He left with his wife Megan, nine months pregnant, and their dog Heisman. He returned with Megan, Heisman and two kids – son Canon, born five days after Mullen took the Mississippi State job, and daughter Breelyn.
When Stricklin called him last Thanksgiving weekend to gauge his interest, there was no turning in the night on what decision to make.
"We just looked at each other,'' said Megan, a former TV sports anchor in Toledo, Ohio, who met Mullen during his time as a Bowling Green assistant. "We had other opportunities over the years to leave. It was always, 'no, we're good.' This time was different. We didn't have to say a word."
Mullen is so familiar to Florida fans that it can seem they know all there is to know. The labels are neatly attached.
A kid from the Northeast who played small-college football. Aspiring young coach who rode a bike to his first job at Wagner College in Staten Island, N.Y. Earned his ticket to the big time as a Meyer understudy. Hit the mainstream with Tebow at quarterback. Proved himself as a head coach by winning at Mississippi State, including a magical run in 2014 from unranked to No. 1 in six weeks. And finally, rewarded for his patience with one of the marquee coaching jobs in the game and a $6 million-per-year contract.
Undoubtedly, life is good for Mullen.
"I've been very fortunate,'' he said recently inside his roomy office, the same one Meyer once called his own. "I just know I always loved football. It never seemed to end for me. I wasn't heavily recruited, but at the end of high school I wanted to play in college. And then at the end of college … it wasn't like the NFL was coming calling, but I knew I wasn't done, so I just kind of started to get into coaching.
"Here it is, 24, 25 years later, I'm still coaching. I've just always kind of loved it and stuck through it."
In an age when coaches have become increasingly buttoned up, Mullen is often described as personable, a people person, someone who genuinely seems to enjoy engaging with fans, the media, students and so many others who cross the path of a college football coach.
The examples are countless in just the last nine months.
He proved a hit in the spring on his Gator Booster speaking tour. He championed a #PackTheSwamp marketing campaign to revive interest in a program coming off a 4-7 season. He spoke to students at an Accent Speakers Bureau event on campus – surprising many by showing off some ballet moves -- participated in the annual Dance Marathon for charity, plopped his new Jordan Brand sneakers on the desk at SEC Media Days and entertained the crowd at his first Gator Talk radio show of the season on Thursday night at a local Italian restaurant.
That's just Dan being Dan, said Barbara Mullen, who at 72 still puts in 80-hour weeks as owner and director of the Londonderry Dance Academy back in Mullen's hometown of Manchester, N.H.
"He grew up around that studio and theater influence,'' Barbara Mullen said. "We always had a lot of foreign guests and artists staying at our house. He was introduced to a lot of theatrical people growing up."
Barbara Mullen was born in North Wales in the U.K., learned to dance at a boarding school in Chester, England, and traveled across Europe and other parts of the world as a ballerina. She met Mullen's father, Bob, when he was stationed overseas while in the Air Force. They married in Spain and settled briefly in Philadelphia, where Dan was born and Bob Mullen grew up.
The Mullen family eventually settled in New Hampshire, where Barbara's eclectic interests and outgoing personality trickled down to her oldest. The couple later had another son, Patrick, and daughter, Katie.
Dan was perhaps the only kid in the neighborhood to go straight from ballet practice to throwing the football in the yard.
"He was an only child for almost six years before his brother was born,'' Barbara said. "We had a lot of time that we spent together."
While Mullen's parents are no longer together, Barbara still lives in the same home Dan grew up in and runs the dance studio that was built in 1984. Barbara is in town this weekend for a rare visit to watch the Gators' opener.
When she gets back home, she opens rehearsals for one of her academy's biggest shows of the season, a "Nutcracker" performance that takes place each year over Thanksgiving weekend, which is why she was not in Starkville with other members of the family last year when Stricklin called.
Thanks to his mother's influence, Mullen is an accomplished piano player and fan of BroadwayHD, the streaming service devoted to the performing arts.
"I did ballet and tap and jazz in the theater,'' he said.
Still, despite her best efforts to keep Dan from contact sports, the pull of football was too great.
"He took classes for a while,'' she said. "He let me know pretty early on that it wasn't probably going to be his thing."
Barbara recalls a pivotal moment that led to where Dan is today. It was his freshman year at Trinity High School. One day early in the school year, she got a call from Dan to pick him up later than usual from school. She was concerned he was in trouble.
"Oh my gosh, please don't tell me he's got a detention so early in the program,'' she said.
Instead, he told her he had joined the football team.
"I said, 'well, I think we should just go right back there and tell them you've changed your mind,'' she recalled. "That was the beginning of it I suppose. And here on we go."
Before long, Mullen's success on the field as Trinity's quarterback won Barbara over. Mullen helped the school win a state championship his junior season as director of the Pioneers' straight-T offense and as a defensive end. He also was captain of the basketball team.
No one could envision the heights Mullen would eventually reach in athletics, but Skip Swiezynski, Trinity's head coach in the state-title season of 1988, got a reminder of his competitiveness three years ago during the Massachusetts High School Football Coaches' Association clinic at Gillette Stadium.
"He came up to me and said, 'You took me out of that game and put in [Justin] Fossbender. I didn't go back in until he got hurt. I was so mad,' " Swiezynski told the Manchester (N.H.) Union-Leader in December, shortly after Mullen took over the Gators. "Just the fact that I hadn't talked to him in years and we sat down and didn't skip a beat -- that tells you the type of kid Danny Mullen is."
Mullen earned all-state honors as a senior quarterback and contemplated Ithaca (N.Y.) College before settling on Ursinus, where he was a teammate of current Oakland Raiders defensive coordinator Paul Guenther.
Gilbert moved Mullen to tight end to best take advantage of his all-around ability.
"He was really balanced at tight end,'' Gilbert said. "A good blocker and a good receiver. He had a good combination of that and was recognized as an all-conference player because of that."
Gilbert, who left Ursinus to start the program at Jacksonville University in the late 1990s, has remained in touch with Mullen over the years and attended Mullen's speaking engagement at EverBank Field in the spring. He is one of a constant stream of people from Mullen's past who have journeyed to wherever Mullen is coaching to catch a game the past two decades.
Gilbert is no longer in coaching – he is CEO of the non-profit Communities In Schools of Jacksonville that supports at-risk youth – but he could see Mullen's personality translating into a leadership role when he was done as a player.
Mullen was well-rounded by the time he arrived at Ursinus in 1990.
"He always had a great connection with his teammates, but also the adults that were in his life. He's got that great personality and that smile goes a long way," Gilbert said. "He's obviously a very, very good competitor, and when the lights flipped on, he was ready to go.
"He definitely enjoyed the college life is the best way to say it. He took care of business academically, he took care of business in the weight room and football, but I think he enjoyed the social part. He made a lot of friends up there."
Mullen's path to become the 27th head coach in Gators football history has been well-documented the past few months. He started as receivers coach at Wagner, moved on to Columbia University, and then stepped up to Division I as a graduate assistant at Syracuse in 1998 and at Notre Dame in 1999-2000, which is where he first met Meyer.
In a touch of irony, prior to Mullen's return to Florida, fellow Manchester product Chip Kelly appeared his greatest challenger for the job. UF officials met with Kelly, who was out of coaching, prior to the end of Mississippi State's season.
Mullen considers Meyer his greatest coaching influence and former Syracuse offensive coordinator Kevin Brown, whom he worked closely with as a graduate assistant, as the person who really helped him see the big picture.
However, fresh out of college, one of Mullen's friends had played with Kelly at the University of New Hampshire. Mullen called Kelly, who returned to his alma mater as running backs coach in 1994, for a recommendation. That call helped lead Mullen to an interview for a job at Wagner.
Mullen reflected on the events during the recent interview in his office, having bumped into Kelly briefly on the recruiting trail after Kelly was hired at UCLA and Mullen returned to Florida.
"He helped me get into coaching, just being an older guy from the same hometown. He kind of helped me get my foot into the door early on,'' Mullen said. "I know I helped him, too. He came down here [to study us] when he was at Oregon. [Ohio State assistant and Manchester native] Ryan Day is involved in that. He was a GA here. Chip called me, 'Hey, I got this kid Ryan Day, can you help me out?' It kind of trickles down."
Or, in the case of three kids from a hometown with an estimated population of 110,000 according to the most recent census, it trickles up.
Gators defensive coordinator Todd Grantham isn't surprised by Mullen's rise in the profession. Grantham joined Mullen's Mississippi State staff last season and decided to follow him to UF.
"He gets it, big-picture," Grantham said. "He's constantly on top of things. He's a grinder. He's emphasizing all three phases as far as offense, defense, special teams. That's his belief and that's what he sells."
Finally, after months of speaking engagements, booster stops and preseason practices, the product Mullen has sold since his return goes on display.
If in a moment of excitement he stands on point like they do in ballet, don't be alarmed. It's all part of his story.
"There's so much we haven't done football-wise,'' he said. "We haven't got to enjoy the exciting part of playing the games and the season. That's what makes all of this special for so many people."
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