ORLANDO – When
Dan Mullen walked through the doors of what will be the Gators' locker room here on Aug. 24 when they face Miami, he did so with a tanned face and half-full bottle of water, byproducts from a day on a Tampa golf course with Florida boosters.
As Mullen concluded a two-day trip to Tampa and Orlando on Thursday with a stop at Camping World Stadium to speak to the Central Florida Gator Club, he quickly transitioned from coach to pitchman. Mullen took a seat in front of a camera for some promotional spots for the first Florida-Miami game since 2013.
The highly anticipated matchup, announced in April 2016 when Mullen was still head coach at Mississippi State and his athletic director was
Scott Stricklin, loomed exactly 100 days away when Mullen turned his attention to a game that is being touted as the official kickoff of the 150th anniversary of college football.
"Right in the middle of the state,'' Mullen said. "It's such a special way to kick off a special season of college football. It's going to be a special game."
The previous night in Tampa, Mullen spoke to the media for the first time since a string of off-the-field headlines engulfed the program. The season opener against the Hurricanes seemed an afterthought.
The same was true to a lesser extent when Mullen talked to a horde of reporters prior to his speaking engagement Thursday. He was asked many of the same questions as the previous night, with a new one tossed in about senior running back
Lamical Perine's recent encounter with a tow-truck driver.
Mullen handled the questions professionally and as well as could be expected, acknowledging his disappointment in the wayward decisions by a staff member and small group of players. Still, there was no sense of panic that dysfunction had invaded and taken over the roster.
"It's hard to group any of them together,'' he said.
When he could, Mullen kept focus on the program as a whole and his enthusiasm of opening his second season in a showcase game.
This is the first time the Gators and Hurricanes have played since 2013 and pits Mullen against Miami first-year coach Manny Diaz, a two-time assistant on Mullen's staff at Mississippi State.
"I love playing in big games,'' Mullen said. "I love the excitement of big games."
What about playing the Hurricanes every year as the programs did prior to the Southeastern Conference expanding to 12 schools?
Mullen isn't ready to go there in a month the Gators have announced future nonconference home-and-home series against Colorado and Texas.
"It's easy to say, 'yeah, that would be great.' I think it's a much more difficult process than people make it. I'm excited about this game this year. I don't know if it is an every-year rivalry game. We have that with Florida State already."
Perhaps the best part of Mullen's stop at Camping World Stadium was the reminder it provided that football season is getting closer. The month of May has been a difficult one for the Gators, but as any close observer of the sport knows, this is the time of year when negative headlines – some serious, some bordering on trivial – dot the landscape.
Every coach in America goes to sleep in hopes their program isn't the one everyone is talking about on Twitter by lunchtime for the wrong reasons. For Mullen, after 18 months of mostly good fortune and a 10-win season, he woke up on the wrong side of the bed more than once a few recent mornings.
But much like the stop in Orlando, this week has turned the Gators' attention back toward the future. The Gators returned to class for the start of the summer semester, with a small group of freshmen enrolling and another group on the way.
Asked to contrast reality vs. perception of where the program is currently, Mullen had Aug. 24 on his mind.
"The biggest reality to me is where's our team at, how are our guys performing, how are they developing,'' he said. "Our guys are back on campus now and starting back up summer school, making sure we're developing the right way. That's the biggest, to me, the reality of what's important for us to be ready to be here, right here in this location."
The Gators-Hurricanes game is a hot ticket. With no public sale and the schools' allotments sold out, a check this week on StubHub.com revealed single-ticket prices ranging from $240.000 to as high as $1,500.00.
Florida's recent turbulence didn't dampen the enthusiasm of those who showed up to listen to Mullen on Thursday. They poured into a large suite as Mullen spoke in front of glass windows that revealed the sun setting over the playing field below.
An hour earlier, Mullen took a walk to the middle of the field for a photo op. He looked around with that familiar bounce in his step, as if fully recharged from a day on the move.
It was clear Mullen sensed what was coming.
"It's so exciting to know that 100 days from right now we'll be right here,'' he said.
