Dan Mullen leaves the broadcast booth and heads back to the sidelines.
According to multiple reportsthe former Florida and Mississippi State coach will be the next coach at UNLV. Mullen has spent the past three seasons as an analyst for ESPN’s college football coverage.
The Rebels went 10-3 in 2024 and will have to replace Barry Odom when he left for Purdue. Like Mullen, Odom was also previously a head coach in the SEC.
Mullen was fired with one game remaining in the 2021 season as Florida was 5-6. The Gators won 21 games in his first two seasons with the team before the school went 8-4 and advanced to the SEC title game in 2020. But Florida lost three straight games to end that season and that trend continued in 2021.
Florida has lost five of its last seven games under Mullen, including as a three-score favorite to South Carolina.
Before coaching at Florida, Mullen was the head coach at Mississippi State for nine seasons. The Bulldogs achieved their longest bowl streak in school history under Mullen as they advanced to postseason play in each of his last eight seasons after going 5-7 in 2009. Before Mullen arrived in Starkville, Mississippi State had never played more than three bowls. games in a row.
The Bulldogs were ranked No. 1 in the first-ever set of College Football Playoff rankings in 2014, en route to a 10-3 season. MSU finished the season ranked No. 7 in the final rankings before losing the Orange Bowl to Georgia Tech.
Before taking the MSU job, Mullen was a longtime assistant under Urban Meyer. He coached with Meyer at Bowling Green, Utah and Florida, where he served as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the Gators.
At UNLV, Mullen takes over a program that is posting consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 1983 and 1984. A win in the LA Bowl later this month will give the Rebels their first 11-win season in 40 years. UNLV has won 19 games in Odom’s two seasons, after winning just 20 games total from 2017 through 2022.
