Dan Mullen was the head coach of the Florida Gators from 2018 to 2021.
In that time period, Mullen went 34-15. He also went 21-13 against SEC opponents.
And yet, Florida decided to fire him after four seasons, and they went to the Sun Belt and poached Billy Napier from Louisiana.
Now the head coach of the UNLV Rebels, Mullen was asked recently about his time at Florida on “The Paul Finebaum Show.”
The former Gators head coach was able to admit that although he coached some good ball, he did fall short of the massive championship expectations in Gainesville.
“We won a lot of games,” Mullen told Finebaum (h/t On3). “But you know what? In today’s world, when you’re when you’re at premier schools, you expect to win. At Florida, they expect championships. I was at Florida as an assistant coach who won two national titles. That’s the standard. That was the standard when I got there. We got to an SEC championship game, fell a couple points short to Alabama. But our standard from the day I got there was championships. We weren’t able to come through, even though we fell a couple points short on on winning the SEC Championship, and going to compete for national championships.”
Dan Mullen takes subtle shot at Florida Gators
Mullen was at Florida during the four-team College Football Playoff era. He told Finebaum that he believes the Gators may have made the CFP a few times with him as head coach if he were around during the 12-team CFP.
He also subtly took a shot at Florida because the Gators’ decision to move on from him and replace him with Napier didn’t really work out.
Napier went 22-23 with the Gators and was fired with five games left in the 2025 season.
“Probably hasn’t gone as well there since I left, it doesn’t seem like,” Mullen said of Florida.
In his first season at UNLV, Mullen went 10-4 and took the Rebels to the Mountain West Championship Game.
The Gators have moved on to Jon Sumrall, who is another unproven head coach, like Napier, who earned his reputation in the Sun Belt.
