He's No Baseball Coach, But Dan Mullen Had a Hand in Mississippi State's First National Title
Dan Mullen doesn’t live in Starkville anymore. He’s no longer employed by the Mississippi State athletic department. And he’s never coached a game of college baseball.
But none of these facts mattered when it came to the (majority) of opinions that Mississippi State fans from around the country basked in the glory of the institution’s first ever national championship in any sport on Wednesday night.
After a turbulent College World Series that ended in an all-SEC championship series after NC State was nixed from the tournament in the semifinals due to players testing positive for COVID-19, the Mississippi State Bulldogs and the Vanderbilt Commodores forced a title-deciding game after each team won a game apiece.
College baseball fans around the country were cheering for the Vandy Boys’ downfall for one of two reasons: the belief that they didn’t deserve to be there after NC State was forced to forfeit, or the Vandy Whistler.
Meanwhile, those loyal to Mississippi State were cheering harder.
Not for the downfall of Vanderbilt, per se. But for the Bulldogs to capture the school’s first national championship... ever.
Among those cheering for MSU through the series was a face familiar to those in Starkville – Dan Mullen.
Mullen took over Mississippi State’s football program in 2009. He had just left Gainesville after serving as Urban Meyer’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks’ coach through the years of Chris Leak and Tim Tebow – who combined for two national championships and a Heisman trophy.
For the next eight years, Mullen served as the face of “Starkvegas”.
From the years of 2009-2017, Mullen led the Bulldogs to a combined record of 69-46, good for a .600 winning percentage.
As pedestrian as that sounds, it was a pretty monumental feat for Mississippi State football at the time.
When Mullen took the job in Starkville, he became the 32nd coach to lead the Bulldogs’ football program.
And when he left, he became just the seventh football coach to leave with a winning percentage of .600 or higher. The last coach to leave behind percentage .600 or higher before Mullen was Darrell Royal, who took over the program in 1954.
Obviously winning ball games in Starkville is possible, but not easy.
Athletic programs in the Southeastern Conference can claim 212 national championships.
Mississippi State is tied for last place with just one national title.
Who are they tied with?
In-state foe, Ole Miss.
Truth be told, there’s not a ton that makes one fall in love with the Magnolia State. Personally, I spent a lot of my summers growing up along the gulf coast of Mississippi. I didn’t hate it, but there wasn’t a ton to it.
Sprinkle that in with the state’s racial past, high levels of poverty and other factors that often knock the Mississippi down a few notches, the state becomes known as the one fun to spell, but boring to talk about.
But in that span that Dan Mullen was coaching the Bulldogs, that changed.
Of course, Mullen coached at MSU at the same time that Hugh Freeze coached at Ole Miss, but regardless – college football was blossoming in the State of Mississippi and Mullen surely had a lot to do with it.
Through the course of the championship baseball series this week, the camera would pan to Dak Prescott, who made the trip to Omaha to watch his alma mater fight for its first national title – a feat Prescott and the Bulldogs’ football team was close to accomplishing in 2014.
It was Dan Mullen’s sixth year at the helm of the Bulldogs’ football program and little was expected from Mississippi State after their less-than-stellar 7-6 finish the year prior.
Despite the mediocrity, the 2013 season was good for two things: For the first time in school history, the football team made it to a bowl game four years in a row. The Bulldogs’ 434 yards per game on offense was also the highest average in program history.
Despite the small victories, Mullen and the Dawgs weren’t expected to be much of anything in 2014.
But by mid-October, Mississippi State was the top ranked college football team in the country – a feat that hadn’t been accomplished in school history.
The Bulldogs were unranked when they began to mow down ranked opponents in a three-week timeframe that sent them flying up the polls. First it was No. 8-ranked LSU, then No. 6-ranked Texas A&M, followed by knocking off second-ranked Auburn on October 11.
Mississippi State held on to the No. 1 spot in the polls for four weeks heading into Tuscaloosa where they’d fall to the No. 5-ranked Crimson Tide 20-25.
Nonetheless, the Mullen-led Bulldogs made a name for themselves after a successful 2014 season.
Dak Prescott donned the cover of Sports Illustrated in October of 2014, and was also the face of the Sports Illustrated’s 2015 College Football preview in August 2015.
Scott Stricklin, then the athletic director at his alma mater Mississippi State, had one thing to say about the program’s surge in attention at the time.
"The line I've used is 'There's a reason you can't buy that kind of exposure because they don't sell it,'" Stricklin said. "You have to be in these kinds of positions to get it."
Dan Mullen put the Bulldogs in that position. And that continues to bleed into the Mississippi State athletics to this day – Wednesday night’s championship baseball game is proof of that.
Mississippi State fielded a good baseball team this season. The Bulldogs played with tremendous grit – almost like a team looking to do something no team before them had accomplished.
And Mullen can’t take credit for either of those.
But bringing a winning culture to Starkville? Yeah – give the guy credit where credit is due.
And many did.
Florida fans should first applaud Mississippi State for its first national championship.
And when they’re finished, they should find a sense of relief that they guy that put Starkville on the map now resides in Gainesville.
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