Whether you want to admit it or not, Sam Pittman left Arkansas football better than he found it.
One major reason Hunter Yurachek hired him in the first place was because of how much he wanted the job. That wasn’t necessarily the case with other candidates, who had just seen the Razorbacks put together back-to-back 2-10 seasons.
At the time, the only two coaches widely known to want the job with heart and soul were Pittman and interim head coach Barry Lunney Jr., both of whom were career position coaches.
Willie Fritz was interested and everyone knows about Arkansas’ pursuit of Lane Kiffin and Eliah Drinkwitz. But even those three were at Group of Five programs and came with question marks that have since been erased (the duo is a combined 16-2 at their respective schools this year).
While Pittman couldn’t quite get over the hump, going 7-19 in one-score games, he at least elevated the program to a level of respectability it didn’t have the last time it was searching for a head coach. For proof, look no further than the names currently being floated to fill the position.
According to veteran sportscaster Mike Irwin of Pig Trail Nation, there are once again two coaches who “would take this job without any conditions whatsoever” – Bobby Petrino and Dan Mullen.
This time, though, the duo is a stark contrast to the position coaches of the last cycle. Both Petrino and Mullen have won double-digit games in multiple seasons as SEC head coaches and have Heisman Trophy winners on their resumes.
Pushing for the Arkansas Job
Petrino is a rare publicly acknowledged candidate, thanks to Hunter Yurachek getting out in front of what everybody would have speculated about anyway revealing in his statement announcing Sam Pittman’s dismissal.
Dan Mullen’s name has surfaced the traditional way – through anonymous sources. That left the door open for a pretty emphatic denial this week:
Of course, long ago, Nick Saban once claimed he was “not going to be the Alabama coach” and Mike Anderson said he planned to “retire” at Missouri. We all know how those turned out.
It would make sense if Mullen wants to return to the conference where he had been a head coach or offensive coordinator for 17 straight seasons from 2005-21.
In fact, Mike Irwin said on The Hospitality Room podcast that Mullen wants the Arkansas job so bad that he “has basically told them, ‘Hey, you don’t have to give me NIL guarantees, you don’t have to give me a bunch of money. I’ll deal with the buyout I have here. I want to come.’”
He added that while he’s heard some coaches have expressed concern in the AD situation at Arkansas, Mullen is fine with Yurachek remaining in his post.
“He hasn’t placed any conditions on accepting this job,” Irwin said of the former Mississippi State and Florida head coach. “He said, ‘I want this job because it’s a perfect situation for me. I can come in, I can recruit, I can build a team up, I can win games.’”
Why Dan Mullen Makes Sense
For a fish, the shiny lure is often the most dangerous one. The same temptation applies in coaching searches. Sometimes, the flashy options aren’t always the best. Names like Jon Gruden may sparkle, but beneath the surface, there’s not much to bite on.
Then there’s Dan Mullen — a nice, sorta dull, juicy worm, poking his head out from the Las Vegas dirt. Ol’ reliable. The college football equivalent of a certain equally beloved and detested character from Succession, if you will:
With a .641 overall winning percentage, Mullen has posted a winning record in 11 of 14 seasons as a head coach. That includes starting this season’s 6-0, which is UNLV’s best start since 1974.
The former ESPN analyst took over the Rebels after spending three years away from the game. Previously, he served as Florida’s head coach from 2018-21, compiling a 34-15 record with two double-digit win seasons. Between 2009-17, he led Mississippi State football to perhaps its best stretch in history, including the Bulldogs’ third 10-win season ever.
On top of that, his three losing seasons all come with an asterisk. His first with Mississippi State understandably fell below .500 and he was fired before he could reach .500 (5-6) in his last year at Florida. In 2016, the Bulldogs went 5-7, but still made the St. Petersburg Bowl due to a high academic progress rate. Stay in school, kids.
Not only has Mullen won everywhere he’s been, but he’s also coached some of the best college quarterbacks in the last 20 years.
Dan Mullen Sure Can Teach the Tar Out of a QB
While working under Urban Meyer as a quarterbacks coach at Utah and Florida, Mullen earned the title of quarterback whisperer. He first coached Utes quarterback Alex Smith, who later went on to be the first pick in the 2005 NFL Draft. Perhaps Mullen’s most famous protege as a quarterback coach is 2007 Heisman winner (to the chagrin of most Hog fans) Tim Tebow. As a head coach, he developed Dak Prescott at Mississippi State, while Kyle Trask and NFL Draft darling Anthony Richardson were other pupils of his at Florida.
That’s quite a list for someone labeled as “not a tenacious recruiter” when he was at Florida, which never really made sense when you looked at his recruiting classes.
At Mississippi State, his average class ranking was 23.6, and at Florida, it was 10.75, according to 247Sports. He also brought in a pair of top-10 transfer classes during his time in Gainesville. While his infamous Florida press conference about waiting until after the season to recruit may have hurt his reputation, much of that criticism seems overblown.
The bigger issue was how his attitude toward recruiting lost trust with the Florida boosters, which could be a red flag in Arkansas’ often fickle landscape. But compared to Florida’s situation now under Billy Napier, whose average class ranking sits at 12.5 with a 21-23 record, it seems that the problem might not have been Mullen all along. While Florida continues to crash and burn, Mullen is now leading UNLV to unprecedented success.
That sounds like a pretty good safety net even if Yurachek swings and misses at other big names.
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Andrew Hutchinson contributed to the above.
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More coverage of Arkansas football’s coaching search from BoAS…
