Florida Has a Dan Mullen Problem

Arky thinks Florida has a Dan Mullen problem and needs a true leader.

Episode Transcript

(00:11):
Well, come into the ark experience. My name is Arkie Say. This
is the experience. And a reportis coming out that Dan Mullen, the
head coach of Florida, will staythe head coach of Florida at least through
the season, the regular season,that is. And that is a huge,

(00:34):
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(02:06):
So Jason find my home dot com. So report comes out that one
mister Dan Mullen is safe for nowas the head coach of the Florida Gators.
And that's just wonderful. I mean, it is just wonderful. Right
that the Gators are five and fiveand two and five in conference and the

(02:29):
water is a little hot, butnot quite yet, not quite yet,
would we be considering getting rid ofDan mullin. Let's talk about this.
I think a couple of weeks agoin the podcast that Dan Mullins in in
bad shape right now. It ismore than just literally what the man says.

(02:53):
It's the way the program gets perceived. The message around his program is
not being controlled by him, andit's not just going out and saying,
hey, don't talk bad about theUniversity of Florida Cator's. It's literally about
everything within that program. You know, Dan Mullin can be flippant about comments

(03:15):
and saying, hey, we're gonnatalk about recruiting when it's time to talk
about recruiting. But guess what,homie, Real good coaches don't talk like
that because they know that gets spuninto different avenues and by different people to
make their own agenda seem legit.And it's really less about some of the

(03:37):
results, and it is about themessage, especially when you're struggling to build
something. You know, we talkoften on this year podcast about how hard
it is to get too good andthen stay good. Right, It's one
thing to get really good at asport or at anything. It's an entirely
different thing to stay good there.And Dan Mullin has flirted was very good

(04:00):
multiple times as head coach, don'treally care as no see doesn't matter at
this point. He flirted very brieflyat Mississippi State, and he's flirted with
Georgia. But he has been avictim of very, very very poor decision
making, not only on his partbut on other coaches parts. And those

(04:24):
coaches are the direct result of onemister Dan mollen bringing them into the poll.
Now they've already fired Dan Melin,and that's great. I'm just giving
that land Wow, a little bitof a fra audient thing there. I
know they've already fired Todd Grantham,and that's at the beginning of this.

(04:44):
The defense is terrible, but it'sit's not just that Dan mollend is a
really good offensive mind for the mostpart, but he's not the best recruiter
and he doesn't have any defensive corenating backbone at all. There's nothing there
to stop the damn Remember when theyfired mister Grantham this week there was a

(05:11):
brand new DC. Did you seewho that new DC was, the Interiom
defensive coordinator. Yeah, it's itdemands by the name of Christian Robinson.
You know, one of the namesof the whole thing. Everybody's heard of,
Christian Robinson. No one heard?Okay, that's fine, that's fine.

(05:32):
Well you know who is also onthat defensive spot. Yeah, yeah,
not as the DC, but aslike a linebackers coach, an Interiom
linebackers coach too, Paul Pascaloni.Yes, And that went so well that
Samford was scoring nearly fifty points inthe first half against Florida. Okay,

(05:55):
so that wasn't That wasn't the best. No, it wasn't. Look,
it all really comes down to dudes. Dudes, and I'm not talking about
your brows and my kind of am. Actually, I'm talking about recruiting and
how good some teams are edit andsome teams aren't. Right now. Florida,

(06:15):
which does not want to talk aboutit right now, fair enough,
but you're twenty second in the country. That's not bad until you look Ding
Dong Dong Dung all the way ninthin the Southeastern Conference. That's not the
best, right because guess who youplay most of your games against. Yeah,

(06:35):
that's our teams in the Southeastern Conference. Absolutely right. I think they
only have like a dozen commits rightnow, which is fine. Four November
sixteenth, except for the early signingperiod is in less than a month,
and that's the new unofficial signing day. They used to be February and now
it's decembery we could be done withit soon. But now here's the thing.

(07:00):
You gotta have the guys, right. If Florida's not getting the right
amount of guys, what are yougonna do Because Florida. Can't just throw
this off a damn molla. Can'tyou say it's time to talk about recruiting.
One's time to talk about recruiting.Recruiting not only never stops the most
important time for the recruiting. Well, it's coming up in a couple of

(07:23):
weeks. When do you want tostart talking about it? When your seven
commits finally say yes to you?By the way, how many of these
dozen dudes are gonna stay on whenyou have no idea what's gonna go on
with your new DC or if you'reeven gonna be around? Who knows?

(07:44):
Literally literally who knows? So asdamn mollen is safe? Yeah, maybe
for a minute, but maybe youstart seeing why some of these universities are
a little quicker to pull the triggerthan maybe they were in the past.
Some of them were really quick,I'll be honest with you. Some were
really quick. But like Justin Findaywas just fired yesterday. It's Tuesday of

(08:07):
a game week. Apparently they're donewith this ish and they needed a couple
extra days after their most recent gameto figure it out. The time to
figure out if you're an elite levelprogram and to make your hay is not
now, it was months ago.And that's not just recruiting. La Hu's

(08:31):
already gotten rid of their guy,even though he's still on the sideline,
it's still a weird situation. VirginiaTech just got rid of a dude,
Yukon's hired, fired, and hireda guy already, the same thing with
Georgia Southern lots and lots and lotsof moving parts. Washington's getting rid of
their guy or already has gotten ridof their guy. And Jimmy Lake there

(08:54):
is no more weight and see,if you think you're supposed to be a
good football program, you can't justlet it happen. And more importantly,
when things start to come unraveled,there's like one guy in this conference that's
earned a couple of years to rerack the team, and that dude don't

(09:16):
need them. So if you wantto build up, like if you're Tennessee,
even though you're worse than right inhell than Florida and recruiting, you
got some time because you're winning somegames you're probably not expected to and putting
up a lot of points and lookingfun doing it. But if you're LSU
in Texas, A and M andAlabama and Auburn and Georgia and teams that

(09:39):
think that they should be near thetop of the heap every single year.
You can't get behind. I mean, you can make some in roads with
fresh faces, but now with currentguys, Damn Bollins already lost the confidence
of a lot of people. Isthere a chance he could turn things around,

(10:01):
not necessarily this year, but nextyear. Yeah, there's a chance.
But the environment right now is ripeto get rid of folks and to
try new things immediately. And canyou blame them with how much money?
It's sort of at stake that twoyears was a short time to get rid

(10:24):
of coaches. You know, JimmyLake coached for two seasons, didn't get
into one Apple Cup. Part ofit's a weird COVID thing, but yeah,
that happened. Nick Rolovich was firedat Washington State. A different thing.
But they didn't want to deal withthe dish. They shouldn't have too,

(10:46):
despite the fact they won a fewgames. It's a very weird time
to just be flippant about comments.If you're Dan Mullen, you have not
earned the right to be flippant withcomments. Nick Saban has Nick Saban's telling
reporters in the press conferences that ifyou want me to criticize guys after a

(11:07):
fifty nine to three win or whateverit was against New Mexico State, if
you want me to criticize my guysafter a game like that, I'm not
gonna do it. This dude wouldrip the asses of anyone he wanted to
five, six, seven, tenyears ago, no matter what the score
was. He can be flipping andbe okay with it for crying out a

(11:31):
loud when he who beat Tennessee butstruggled for a little bit against Tennessee struggles
an operative term. It's also verysubjective, but he just talked about how
happy he was and how proud itwas to beat Tennessee. It's not the
knick Saban. We all knew it'sdifferent and he's adjusted. Maybe it's white

(11:54):
is the greatest. Dan Mullen's notthe greatest. Dan Mullen's just weird dad
Joe guy, weird khaki pants guythat gets some players to commit. Sure,
but like that's not a it shouldbe a dominant program there. There's
a lot of things to attract oneto the University of Florida unless your head

(12:18):
coach is a weirdo and a nerd. Not even a cool weird nerd like
Mike Leech or something. He's justa dork. Anyway, Listen, no
one's asking me to commit to theUniversity of Florida, and that's fine.
I won't you listen to me,Dan Danny listening. I'm not committing.

(12:39):
I know you're offered. I'm notcommitting, But I will say this that
I think Dan Mullen is one ofthe most interesting coaches in America when it
comes to his appeal and to theplace he's at. Guys that he gets
to go there. I don't getit. It's got to be mostly the
Florida brand and the Jumpman brand,like that's what gets people interested. It

(13:03):
can't be Damn Mullin, no matterhow many times you think you could sell
people in getting a lot of targetsand a cute, creative offense like you
need more. You need more towin and to win consistently. And how
quickly does Florida want to make thatkind of decision whether or not you want

(13:24):
to move on from Dan Mullen.Listen, I would love to tell you
that I'd like to give coaches three, four or five years to figure out
teams. Just I win day wentsix, kind of figured out one year,
not really the rest. That's kindof rare. You ain't getting that

(13:45):
in Florida. So what intarnation doesFlorida do. I think Florida cuts ties.
I think Florida is a dangerous positionto where they are in severe risk.

(14:05):
They're at severe risk of ruining anykind of SEC championship game appearance momentum
that they had. I don't carewho you beat in the Bowl game.
I really don't care that you tookAlabama down to the wire. People are
making business decisions now. These kidsare making decisions about their future, about

(14:31):
money, about the ability to beseen, and about winning. Florida is
a place that can have all ofthat with the right combination of coaches,
and it starts with the top guy, and I don't think they have that.

(14:56):
I think Florida needs an elite thelevel recruiter badly and fast. I
don't know if Dan Malone wants totalk about coaching hires, because we'll talk
about coaching hires when's time to talkingabout coach hires. But he at least
needs a message. Man. Thatmessage has to be uniform across the board

(15:20):
that we're Florida. We're gonna bethe best. We're going after the best.
We're gonna be every bit as goodas anybody else in this country.
And that's how we're going to actconstantly. We're not gonna go out there
and do Hulk Hogan ramp ups ofthe crowd when you're gett into fights with
who was that Kentucky? I don'tthink that was? Was that Vanderbilt?

(15:43):
I can't remember who that was.We're not gonna do that. We're gonna
go play ball. We're gonna gowin. That's it. That's our goal,
and everything that we're doing is adirect pointer to the end goal.

(16:07):
Every step we take goes to onespot, and that's to win national championships.
You've proven you can get there.But who's the guy that comes in
and gives you the chance to havea consistent message. Who's the guy you

(16:27):
could trust to be even handed,coolheaded and can be a dominant recruiter.
Put together a staff of filthy recruitersand go hit that state and hit the
country hard as hell. Do youneed a Luke Fickle Because I don't think

(16:53):
Dan Mullins it. In fact,I feel pretty confident saying Dan Mullins not
it. Florida went after a guywho had previous coaching experience there as an
a coordinator and thought they could justreplicate offense, and that's all it took.

(17:14):
Florida's an image man, Florida's aswagger. Florida is different. Act
like it. Don't act like theguy from Christmas Vacation who I can't think
of. His name doesn't matter,you guys know it. Don't act like
that guy. A guy's nine winningchampionships. Act like the guy that's the

(17:41):
head of one of the best programsthat could be in college football today period.
There are plenty of guys that actlike that in the MAC and in
the ACC. They may not beas good as coaches, and they may
be a little hamstrong as far asfinancials and such, but they act the

(18:07):
part Stan Mullen, act the partdude