STARKVILLE — College football players waiting for an evening kickoff have creative lists of things to do while they wait.
Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen watches college football.
Before and after his games on Saturdays, Mullen watches other games to stay as informed as possible so he can vote in the Amway Coaches Poll. This is the second year in a row Mullen will have that responsibility.
“11 a.m. home kick is the greatest time to kick off for me,” Mullen said. “At 3:30 I’m at home with my kids, I have the games going in the background, I’m having dinner with my family, have some nice family (time) and we go watch some ball.”
Mullen starts with his ballot from the previous week and takes what he has seen in recent weeks to modify it. He also gets input from Bill Martin, associate athletic director for communications and football sports information director. It’s not uncommon for coaches to delegate such a task almost entirely to someone like Martin, but Mullen never has in part because he enjoys the process.
“I love football,” Mullen said. “I may not sit there and scour over every game — although I pretty much am. I may not be fun to watch with because I can watch four games at a time. I can flip (channels) a lot. I can flip a bunch and follow exactly what’s going on. You’d probably get seasick watching a game with me.”
Mullen keeps up with how teams by watching games when he can and by watching highlights. He admits he using teams he coaches against — “We get to play a bunch of really good teams.” — to help him evaluate where teams need to be ranked and as reference points to consider other teams.
Those things don’t help him much for the preseason poll.
“I bet every coach, if they’re honest with you, is doing the same. Nobody knows,” Mullen said. “Afterward, you’ve seen games, you’ve seen highlights, you’ve seen crossover people. We played this team, I thought they were this good and that good compared to other people we played, and that’s how you judge and evaluate it.”
After a few weeks of gathering information, Mullen ranks teams similarly to the College Football Playoff Selection Committee based on their resumes. In describing how he fills out his ballot, Mullen circled back to the word “deserving.” He uses the dame formula when it comes to his team.
“We spent a bunch of weeks at No. 1 in the country. Were we the best team in the country? I don’t know. Were we the most deserving? Yeah, we had three top-10 wins,” Mullen said. “I look at who’s deserving more than where everybody is. I try to vote (MSU) as deserving as everybody else. I think I voted us No. 1 because I thought we deserved it.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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