In the debate of who the best college football coaches are, whether in a particular season or of all time, there’s always one issue that people go round and round on without an objective solution to point to. It comes down to this: which is more impressive, winning championships at a well-resourced program or winning a lot of games at a perennial loser?
Kansas State was about as bad as a power program can be before Bill Snyder. The Wildcats took a dive right after he left and got better upon his return. It’s a tough place to win, being located in a small town in the middle of nowhere without a talent-rich state bordering in any direction. What he did is one of the best jobs ever done.
But is it more impressive than Bobby Bowden building up FSU from practically nothing to a major power but inside a talent hotbed? Or what Dabo Swinney did at Clemson, reawakening a football-mad program and winning a couple of national titles?
What about Steve Spurrier? Which was the better job, winning six conference championships and one national title at a well-resourced Florida or making South Carolina good every year and winning 11 games in three seasons straight?
There is no one answer to these questions. They’re all subjective. However, it can pretty easily be argued that winning titles at a power program and winning a surprising amount of games in a downtrodden or tough place to win are just separate skills. Some like Spurrier can do both. Most probably could do one but not the other.
Which brings us to Dan Mullen.
He is the kind of head coach who can elevate one of the sport’s underclass. We know because we saw him do it at Mississippi State. They were bad before he got there and bad for years after he left. They might be getting back on track out there in Starkville, but only because they hired another guy who specializes in winning despite the circumstances.
What Mullen has done at UF hasn’t deviated enough from what he did at MSU. Someone needs to have another talk with him about how Florida is not Mississippi State.
I say “another” because he signed four players in the 2019 recruiting cycle who did not qualify for school. I don’t know if it was the case with all of them, but some of them were explicitly sign-and-place maneuvers.
If you don’t follow recruiting, here’s what sign-and-place is. You sign a player who you know is not going to make it into school academically. You direct him to a JUCO that is friendly to you, and if he gets his grades on track and remains a good prospect, you can bring him in once he’s done at JUCO.
UF, which fancies itself as a top 5 university if you haven’t heard, is not a school that looks kindly upon sign-and-place. Most power programs don’t do it regardless of what they think it does to their image, just because you lose an initial counter the year when the guy signs out of high school. It’s a tactic for the Mississippi States and Kansas States of the world. They don’t have “public Ivy” bona fides to worry about, and they regularly sign guys of out JUCO anyway.
I don’t know the specifics, but there were rumblings that word came down from on high in the administration to cut that $#!& out. There was one non-qualifying guy in the 2020 class, but he was truly a borderline case who almost got in. There were no non-qualifiers in 2021, and I’m not aware of any borderline guys among the 2022 commits.
But apparently Mullen needs to hear more about how Florida is not Mississippi State.
His recruiting classes have generally ranked between ten and 15. The 2019 class falls from 9th to that range once you take out the non-qualifiers, though his 2020 class was a legit ninth even without the one NQ. But his transitional class was 14th, the ’21 class was 12th, and the ’22 class currently sits at No. 22. They’re going to have to do a mad scramble at the end to avoid being outside the top 15, much less the top ten.
That level of recruiting doesn’t cut it when Alabama and Georgia are in your conference. See Kirby Smart’s postgame comments for some unvarnished truth on the subject.
Mullen also hasn’t demanded top performance from his assistants. You can get away with that when you’re in no trouble of being fired after a 7-5 season. You can’t at the elite level.
Todd Grantham is not the guy for a school at UF’s level. He has been at such a school before, and he was fired for doing a bad job. MSU? Sure. Fine. Florida? No.
Ron English landed few recruits of note and oversaw bad safety play, but it took three years for him to get fired. John Hevesy doesn’t just land few blue chip players but reportedly actively repels them with his personality and lack of drive for recruiting. Greg Knox has landed two high school running backs in five cycles (including a ’22 commit) and his special teams have generally been bad.
You can’t have recruiting dead weight on your staff. Maybe one, if he’s just a terrific developer or something. The guys who are bad recruiters at UF right now are also not great developers and/or on-field coaches, though. There is no room for that at the top of the sport.
So, Mullen needs to stop running his UF program like it’s Mississippi State. He talks all the time of the Gator Standard but his actions say he’s following the West division Bulldog Standard. The East division Bulldogs are eating his lunch, and it’s not getting any better. If anything, it’s getting worse.
Florida is one of the top programs in the country because it has so many built-in advantages. Even despite the mismanagement, UF still isn’t miles away from title contention. It doesn’t have to be stripped down to the studs.
But it does need someone with a different set of skills than what Mullen has shown he has, and he won’t be at the helm much longer if he doesn’t display a newfound ability to run a program like an elite head coach.