Dan Mullen spent Wednesday on the Paul Finebaum Show looking back at his four years in Gainesville, and he did not leave much on the table.
Mullen, now heading into his second season at UNLV after a breakout 10-win debut season, made the case that his Florida teams would have fared just fine under the 12-team College Football Playoff format that exists today. Then he closed with a reminder that the Gators have not exactly taken off since he was let go.
"We won a lot of games," Mullen said. "But you know what? In today's world, when you're at premier schools, you expect to win. At Florida, they expect championships. I was at Florida as an assistant coach who won two national titles. That's the standard."
Then came the part that has made some waves.
"And I think maybe if the Playoff era was around, I think three out of my four years, we would have made the College Football Playoff. Maybe that would have looked a little bit different back then with the resume, keeping me around a little bit longer to try to go win that national title. But hey, it is what it is. Probably hasn't gone as well there since I left, it doesn't seem like."
The record backs up at least that part of the claim. Mullen went 34-15 at Florida from 2018 to 2021, including 21-13 in SEC play. His first team finished 10-3, his second went 11-2, and the 2020 group reached the SEC Championship Game before falling to Alabama. Under a 12-team bracket, all three of those resumes would have been in the conversation. The 2021 season, which ended with Mullen's firing, is the lone outlier.
Here's how each of Mullen's first three seasons in Gainesville ended:
2018: Ended the regular season ranked No. 10, then beat Michigan in the Peach Bowl to finish No. 7 (10-3).
2019: Ended the regular season ranked No. 9, beat Virginia in the Orange Bowl, and finished No. 6 (11-2).
2020: After losing the SEC Championship Game to Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide, sat at No. 7 heading into bowl season. A Cotton Bowl loss to Oklahoma dropped them to No. 13 in the final poll (8-4).
What has happened since is harder to argue with. Billy Napier took over and went 22-23 across four seasons, becoming the first Florida coach with a losing record since the 1940s. The Gators fired him in October 2025 following a 3-4 start, then turned to Jon Sumrall, who arrived from Tulane with a 42-11 head coaching record and conference title game appearances in all four of his seasons.
Mullen, meanwhile, has rebuilt his own stock. In his first year at UNLV he went 10-4, reached the Mountain West Championship Game, and was named the Steve Spurrier First-Year Coach of the Year by the Football Writers Association of America. You copuld certainly argue that kind of debut back on the sidelines after a brief hiatus buys a coach some room to say what he said Wednesday.
Whether the shot lands the way Mullen intended is now up to Florida to answer on the field. Sumrall inherits a program that has cycled through two coaches in five years and a fan base that, as Mullen pointed out, still measures everything in championships - and likely always will.
Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.