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It might be too late now for Dan Mullen’s suggestion to work, but the ex-Florida head coach presented an idea to Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin after getting fired in 2021.
He wanted the Gators to get Lane Kiffin from Ole Miss — where he was just finishing a 10-3 campaign — as his replacement, but instead, the Gators opted to hire Billy Napier and kickstart an era that has recently kept veering toward the point of no return just three weeks into his third season with the team.
“You know what’s pretty funny? When I got let go at Florida a couple years ago, they asked me and I said, ‘Hey, I’d go hire Lane Kiffin right now,’” Mullen said during an appearance on “The Zach Gelb Show” earlier this week. “I said, ‘If you’re going to get rid of me, I’d go hire Lane Kiffin from Ole Miss right now.’ He kind of has that, a little bit of that, you know at Florida, they love points. He’s going to continue the offense to run points.
“He’s walking in with an Anthony Richardson, you’re walking in with a top-five draft pick at quarterback, so the program’s in good shape offensively that way. There were some high-powered receivers committed and on the roster, so I think he would have been a great fit right off the bat.”
Mullen, who hasn’t returned to coaching since his Florida firing and has worked as an ESPN college football analyst since 2022, went 5-6 in 2021 and was fired with one game remaining in the season.
Before the end of the season, Florida hired Louisiana head coach Billy Napier, and his first regular season with the Gators ended with a .500 record and an appearance in the Las Vegas Bowl — which they lost.
Since, though, he has gone 6-9 entering Saturday’s game at Mississippi State, and Florida most recently lost, 33-20, to Texas A&M last week.
“We can’t live in the should have, could have, would have, if, then, all that,” Napier told reporters this week. “I think ultimately we got an obligation to the players and our leadership at the university to do our best to play well this week. That’s all we can control. Anything else is a waste of time.”
If the Gators moved on from Napier, they’d need to search for their fifth coach since the 2014 season.
But it might be difficult for the Gators to pull Kiffin away from the Rebels, who have started 3-0 and enter their game against Georgia Southern ranked No. 5 in the most recent AP poll.
“He’s now gotten Ole Miss to, you know, being in playoff contention,” Mullen said of Kiffin and Florida. “So I don’t know if that’s something that would interest him or not. You never know in the coaching profession why, maybe, someone is making a decision.
“They’re gonna have their personal or whatever reason to do it, but I think a couple years ago he probably would have taken the job if it were offered to him.”
