Florida — and the SEC — need Mullen to be like Spurrier
ATLANTA — There was a time in the college football realm that it was Alabama and everyone else.
Sounds crazy, right? Or maybe not.
Well, let’s travel back to the 1970s. Big-bottomed pants were the rage. There were things known as lava lamps and pet rocks. You could kick back a cocktail as a teenager, and the President’s brother was a brew master.
OK, considering everything old is new again, maybe that does not seem that long ago.
Anyhoo, if you think today’s Southeastern Conference is Nick Saban’s world — and you’re right — think back to the days of disco and domination that was Bear Bryant. Alabama won or shared nine SEC titles from 1971 to 1981.
That dominance was in large part disrupted by Herschel Walker and Bo Jackson, two the best ever in a time when running backs were the bee’s knees.
But that one-team dominance certainly was not a path to the overwhelming league dominance the SEC reached when Saban was LSU Saban and before he became Lord Saban, who, considering the depth of competition and the current rules, is better than Bear ever was.
Are we staring into the abyss of oneteam dominance for the foreseeable future? Could the SEC pattern of hiring assistants from the best — it happened with Bear; it’s happening with Saban — replicate a competitive rejuvenation among the league and across the conference?
Possibly. Potentially. Personally, we hope so.
The league’s better when it’s not the Bear and the nine dwarves or Lord Saban and his proteges and the wannabes, unless of course you have season tickets in T-Town or a child named Crimson.
Not everyone is buying that premise, of course.
“That narrative is such a joke,” 2018 College Football Hall of Fame inductee Matt Stinchcomb said Tuesday on Chattanooga’s “Press Row” on ESPN 105.1 the Zone at SEC Media Days. “If Alabama was any other conference, it would be Alabama and a bunch of other teams. It’s a measurement from zero-to-Tuscaloosa.”
That’s fair, because Alabama is that good.
But if the SEC just means more, as they try to tell us in every commercial break of every SEC sporting event ever, then there needs to be more balance. There also needs to be more charisma.
Ladies and gentlemen, enter Dan Mullen, the former Mississippi State coach who is now the boss of the Florida Gators.
Mullen was forever comfortable in Starkville. He of the “school up north” in reference to hated Ole Miss. He of the swag shoes. He of the “UT-CHATT-anooga!” when describing Nick Fitzgerald’s choices other than MSU in recruiting.
Will he be forever comfortable in Gainesville, though, is a different question. The expectations are skewed. An eight-win this fall with the Gators will be great, considering last year’s debacle. With eight wins in back-to-back seasons, then year three becomes win big.
In truth, while Tennessee and Georgia fans may cringe, the league needs the Gators to be good.
The SEC was an Alabama-dominated league in the 1970s that became a regionally important league in the 1980s.
Then Steve Spurrier landed at his alma mater, Florida became great and the league soared. Those things are not coincidences.
Spurrier became the guy everyone loved to hate. He became the black hat with the silver tongue and the blue tint in his eyes above his boyish grin. And it was great.
During the season. During the offseason. During game week. During the postgame.
Spurrier was Spurrier, irritatingly great and greatly irritating, and it made the rest of the league get better or get ready to get blasted.
Can Mullen be that, a Spurrier in a Twitter world, when the league needs another storyline other than who can beat Alabama and which Saban protege will have the most success? He has been on staff and helped develop a slew of great quarterbacks in Alex Smith, Tim Tebow, Dak Prescott and Fitzgerald.
And if his philosophy is more coachspeak than just about anything Spurrier ever said, there is more than a measure of truth in his pitch.
“To be honest with you, our job as coaches is to put them in position to be successful. If I have a — if I’ve got a square peg in a round hole, OK, I mean, you can sit there and slam all you want. It’s not going to work,” Mullen said. “What you need to do is go find a square peg, right? Or a round peg in a round hole or square peg in a square hole. “It’s not that complicated.” Neither is the need of Florida fans for Mullen to bring the bite back to the Gators, which could add a great deal more bite to the league as a whole.