Mullen needs a communications makeover

Photo by Chris Spears

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach so you get what we had here last week.” – Strother Martin as The Captain in the movie “Cool Hand Luke”

Failure to communicate is not the only problem The Captain of the Good Ship Gator has these days, but it’s the one that the media has grabbed onto and won’t let go.

In the case of the Florida Gators, The Captain is Dan Mullen. To put it kindly, his last few days have been a public relations nightmare but things have been difficult ever since his postgame comments after the Kentucky game. Following the Kentucky game, Mullen bristled when a reporter asked point blank if he had been outcoached by Mark Stoops. He responded that the Gators had outgained Kentucky 382-224. However true that may be, no matter how many yards the Gators gained, they still LOST the football game.

The Gators have outgained all eight teams they’ve played so far yet they are 4-4 as they head into Saturday’s encounter in Columbia with a South Carolina team that is an 18-point underdog for good reason. If won-lost records were determined by who gained the most yardage, Florida would be 8-0 and ranked No. 1 in the nation, but the only stats that matter are PF and PA, as in points for and points against. You get more PF every game you win. When you have more PA you lose. Florida has lost the PF/PA battle four times this season and that doesn’t bode well with a fan base that realizes all too well that the Gators could have actually won those four games they lost.

Florida fans love the stats, but they really only care about winning and losing. They want to see the Gators pulverize the Gamecocks Saturday night, then they want to see three more blowout wins over Samford, (at) Missouri and Florida State. Winning all four games in November won’t make people forget that the Gators could have been in the national championship hunt if they had only avoided mistakes at critical junctures in the four losses, but four decisive wins in November will take some of the edge off a season that hasn’t exactly lived up to expectations.

Winning these last four games is important but winning can only help Mullen so much. He’s not in any danger of losing his job – at least not this year – but he does need to figure out this communication thing and get better at it in a hurry. Right now, both state and national media see Mullen as an easy target for quivers full of darts and arrows. Fans pay attention to what they hear on ESPN and talk radio and what they read online and in their daily newspapers.

The image of the Gator chomping Mullen getting off the plane in Gainesville in December of 2017 has been replaced by a constant barrage of negatives.

If Mullen intends to win back the portion of the Gator Nation that is unhappy not to mention the hearts and minds of potential recruits and transfers, then he needs to win these next four games and absolutely cannot afford another PR disaster like the one he had Monday. There is absolutely no way to put a positive spin on that one.

At a Monday morning press conference that lasted a few seconds short of 13 minutes – typically, the Monday presser goes 30 – Mullen went into a defensive posture when the first question had to do with recruiting. The questioner knew Mullen can’t go into specifics about recruits, but he asked a general question: Is a new approach needed? Given the decommitment of Florida’s top two committed recruits in the days before, it seemed like a fair question, but Mullen’s answer was contentious.

“We’re in the season right now,” Mullen responded. “We’ll do recruiting after the season. When it gets to recruiting time, we can talk about recruiting.”

Mullen could have explained that Florida is working hard to secure a good recruiting class and tempered it with there is only so much he can say about it right now, but his answer was abrupt and contentious. He needed to loosen up but didn’t. About 10 very tense minutes later, the press conference was over and done with.

The optics were bad and they got even worse when it was announced there would be no further media access for players and coaches with the exception of the 10 minutes of the mandatory Wednesday SEC Coaches Teleconference. Within minutes the Twitterverse went vicious. By end of the day Monday, the national media was letting Mullen have it both barrels. It could have been and should have been avoided.

Wednesday, on the Teleconference, Mullen tried to smooth things over but again, something was lost in translation. Perhaps it was a sincere attempt to help make things right but it didn’t come across that way.

“First, I’d like to touch on something for all the Gator Nation, all our great fans, of something that was taken out of context at Monday’s press conference as it pertains to recruiting,” Mullen said. “Our staff recruits non-stop. We grind at recruiting every day. We’re always recruiting and working the best to get great players that fit the Gator Standard and bring them here to our program, and as I said on Monday, we just weren’t going to get into the specifics on everything we do in recruiting and how we do all of that until after the season.

“Also, there were some people that were concerned about our player availability. On Monday morning, we had an 8 o’clock team meeting. We had a great meeting with the team. I thought the energy, the excitement of our players going into this final third of our season, and the focus of which we have to take and the approach we need to take in the final third of the season. I felt that the best for our players was to make sure our focus is completely on the work that we have to do in the final third of the season. And, so because of that, I made myself available for media every single day this week – Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday – because we didn’t have the players available. So I just want to clarify some of those things that apparently have been taken way out of context over the last several days.”

The Tuesday availability was a one-on-one interview with Edgar Thompson of the Orlando Sentinel. No one else was invited. Wednesday, Mullen was only on the Teleconference because it’s a requirement.

It was more bad optics at a time when Dan Mullen needs to be doing his best to give the media and a very frazzled Gator Nation the warm and fuzzies. You would think someone would have gotten the hint that all this negative press could be avoided, but it hasn’t happened, therefore it might take weeks or even months to repair some of the damage.

This is not a time for a public relations disaster, but that’s what we have. If Mullen were winning like Nick Saban he could get away with a certain amount of snarkiness or even arrogance, but in the 13 years Dan Mullen has been a head coach, Nick Saban has won six national championships and twice played in the national championship game. When you win as often and as big as Nick Saban, it’s not a necessity to give the media and fan base the giggles on a regular basis. You can even get away with trashing the media if you so desire and it seems Nick has to do that at least a couple of times a year.

When you’re Dan Mullen and you’ve been a head coach 13 years with only one SEC East championship to your name (at Florida in 2020), you don’t need to convince people that you’re the smartest guy in the room. What you need to do is (a) win ball games and (b) cultivate good media relations. A media and fan base that like you will be far more lenient than ones that are hostile.

A lesson could be learned from Florida State. Bobby Bowden took the head coaching job at FSU in 1976. It took him 17 years to win a national championship. Miami won four of them between 1983-1991 before Bobby got his first, but all the time Miami was winning national championships, Bobby Bowden was winning the public relations game. Miami was perceived as the evil empire. FSU got a pass despite numerous shenanigans because Bobby was an aw shucks kind of guy who knew writers and media personalities by their first names. On Sunday mornings after an FSU home game, he bought breakfast for the media who stayed overnight in Tallahassee. When FSU lost, he shouldered the blame and went out of his way to praise the victors, both players and coaches. On the hamburger steak and green pea circuit, Bobby made every fan feel part of FSU’s success by signing autographs, posing for photos and yukking it up.

You think it’s an accident Bobby wasn’t crucified by the media when he said he was praying for a misdemeanor when Peter Warrick was arrested?

Photo by Chris Spears

Dan Mullen needs perceptions to change and there are two ways that he can do it. First, he’s got to win these next four games and get a fairly decent bowl game. A 3-1 record in November isn’t going to cut it. He has to go 4-0 or else the heat he’s feeling right now will feel like a warm breeze by comparison. Second, Mullen and the media handlers at the University of Florida have to go out of their way to change the negative perceptions.

Winning four games decisively even against overmatched opponents will help but only so much. To truly overcome the negative perceptions and bad optics, Mullen needs a public relations makeover in the next month and there is only one way that is going to be accomplished – through communication.

A decision needs to be made by both Dan Mullen and the higher-ups in the University of Florida athletic administration. The admins need to sit him down for a come to Jesus meeting in which it’s explained in full detail that if the Florida Gators are to become a championship-level program, then it’s going to take better communication starting immediately.