STARKVILLE — There’s a small picture hanging in Dan Mullen’s house.
In it, there’s Mississippi State’s coach, standing with his wife.
Only he’s not wearing the familiar maroon and white of MSU. Instead, he’s in the blue and orange of the Florida Gators. He’s also got a national championship trophy in one hand and on his face a winner’s smile.
It’s not unlike hundreds of others that adorn the MSU football coach’s home. They tell the story of a life in football.
But this picture — the one of Mullen and his wife standing on the Orange Bowl turf with a national championship trophy — has one heck of a story.
It’s the story of a coach in the middle of a life-changing decision that altered the course of a football program, a state and nearly 100 young men who return to that same Orange Bowl turf tonight.
In short, the picture tells the story of Mullen’s arrival in Starkville.
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December 2008 was a whirlwind for Dan and Megan Mullen.
The offensive coordinator at the University of Florida, Mullen was preparing for one of the biggest games of his life, Florida’s national championship date against No. 1 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. But there was also this other job.
In the middle of that month, Mullen visited with the athletic brass at Mississippi State University. Days later, he was on a plane headed to Starkville as MSU’s new football coach, beginning a six-year journey that culminates in tonight’s Capital One Orange Bowl against Georgia Tech.
But six years ago, having decided to become MSU’s new head coach, Mullen opted to finish his season at Florida, where he and Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Tim Tebow had unfinished business. That meant a tussle with the Sooners, a game that eventually ended in a 24-14 Florida win and the second Gators’ national championship in three years.
That’s when Mullen’s whirling 24 hours began.
“What I remember about that trip is that I’ve never been more exhausted in my life than being an offensive coordinator for a national championship game,” said Mullen, “while at the same time being a head coach about to take over a program.”
While Mullen led Tebow from Florida’s assistant coaches’ booth at the Orange Bowl that night, his postgame was rather rushed.
Instead of soaking in the confetti shower, Mullen only had one goal in the aftermath of winning a national title. That goal was to take the aforementioned picture.
“The last time I was there, I called the game…ran down on the field and grabbed the trophy,” Mullen said of his Orange Bowl aftermath six years ago. “My wife and I took a quick picture with the crystal ball. We handed it to someone else, went back to the hotel and packed up. I was so wired up. We had just won a national championship. I said goodbye to my family as they were about to go enjoy a nice celebration party.”
While everyone associated with Florida football was celebrating, Mullen was not. His heart was already in Starkville. That’s where it became his responsibility to build his own championship team.
As the Mullens furiously packed their things in a Miami hotel, a plane waited at a nearby airport to take Mullen back to Starkville, where his new team awaited his instructions the next morning.
On that plane was MSU Director of Athletic Greg Byrne and a number of MSU’s support staff. Not on that plane was current Director of Athletics Scott Stricklin, who had already met Mullen earlier in the hiring process.
“You could tell he was going to be special,” Stricklin said of Mullen. “Once he walked into the room, something clicked. He was very bright, it was obvious. He did not have a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach.”
Mullen boarded the plane and set off for a new land, a new job, a new day for MSU football. After landing in the middle of the night, he held his first team meeting just over 12 hours after holding the national championship trophy in Miami.
“I got on the plane, woke up the next morning and had my first team meeting here,” said Mullen. “It was extremely exhaustive, but it was great.”
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Now, Mullen has returned to Miami.
This time he has brought his own team, a 10-2 Bulldogs squad that made school history this season. And with a win over No. 12 Georgia Tech tonight, more history will be made — it would give MSU 11 wins for the first time ever.
For Mullen, having the opportunity to achieve that milestone at the Orange Bowl is fitting.
“It is one of the best, if not the greatest, bowl game experiences in America,” Mullen, who also coached there as a graduate assistant at Syracuse, said. “This will be my third trip to the Orange Bowl as a coach. The way the people down there in Miami — the committee and the community — run the bowl is first class. It will be an unbelievable experience for all of our guys. As Mississippi invades Miami for New Year’s, it’s going to be a pretty big deal and a special time for all of us.”
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