1. I don’t want to get on a soapbox, but …

This no longer is about wins for Dan Mullen. It’s about a loss, one singular defining moment for the Florida Gators that has set in motion real, tangible doubt that will quickly devolve into the inevitable.

Dan Mullen has lost the fan base.

“I didn’t see that coming,” Mullen said after Florida’s 40-17 loss to SEC bottom-feeder South Carolina.

We should’ve all seen this coming.

From an undeniable list of failure not befitting a program that demands championships, to a singular moment where coaching tenures rise and fall, no one survives the loss of the fan base.

And there’s only one way it goes from here. The only question is when.

When do Florida president Kent Fuchs and athletic director Scott Stricklin determine there’s no way out for Mullen, cut their losses and send him away with a $12 million buyout?

When do they accept that Mullen’s greatest strength is game day Xs and Os, and his greatest weakness is recruiting and program building – the lifeblood to winning championships?

When do they realize what makes Mullen so good on fall Saturdays (the audacity of his play-calling), is the very thing preventing the program from developing into the elite (the audacity of being the smartest guy in the room).

When do they ignore that dangerous and debilitating thought – “who are you going to get if you fire him?” — that permeates the decision to fire coaches and paralyzes programs until it’s too late (more on that later)?

A Florida booster, who has given “millions” to the university, regularly emails me. We’ve exchanged emails for more than a decade, dating all the way back to when Urban Meyer was in Gainesville.

He’s levelheaded and has never been a quick-trigger thinker. He sees big picture in a time when small things become big things overnight through the cesspool of social media.

His email to me early Sunday morning, just after the clocks officially fell back an hour, told the story. Make no mistake, he has told me numerous times that he has “never” and “would never” use his position to influence hiring/firing of coaches.

But this email, as much as anything, sums up the current state of Florida football.

“This is much more than losing to South Carolina. I wish it were just losing to South Carolina. This just makes it all worse.”

And that was it. End of email.

This is where the Florida fan base currently resides, a painful purgatory of knowing this won’t get better because Mullen and his staff don’t recruit well enough for it to get better.

You can’t magically become a better recruiter overnight. You can’t coach your way out of this.

You can’t ignore a trendline that shows 8 losses in the past 10 games against Power 5 programs. You can’t avoid Florida ranked No. 23 in the latest 247Sports composite recruiting rankings, behind South Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, LSU, Texas A&M, Alabama and Georgia in the SEC.

You can’t forget a 2020 season that included Mullen’s willful disregard of – get this – recruiting rules that landed Florida on probation for the first time in 3 decades. Or the 3 embarrassing postgame press conferences that put the university and the powerful Gators brand in a bad light.

These all now come more into focus because Mullen’s team showed up on a chilly night in Columbia, S.C., and were blown out by a team playing a 3rd-string quarterback (whose prior experience was in the NCAA lower divisions), and a program on the first step of the ladder back up from ground zero.

Guess who’s at ground zero now?

2. A quick, ugly evolution

The overriding question, without an easy answer, is how did we get here?

How did a team that was a handful of plays away from beating Alabama in the SEC Championship Game last season, lose to one of the worst teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision?

There was a turning point moment, and it’s not what you think.

When former Florida offensive coordinator Brian Johnson left to become the quarterbacks coach for the Philadelphia Eagles, Mullen lost his best recruiter and developer of offensive talent – and as important – the only check on his massive ego.

Johnson was the one coach, a source within the program told me, who could tell Mullen “no.” The one coach Mullen would listen to — not unlike how a previous Florida coach with a huge ego (Urban Meyer) could only hear “no” from one coach (Charlie Strong).

Look, all coaches have egos. Some are bigger than others; some only show up out of circumstance. Mullen’s ego has gotten him into trouble numerous times as the Florida coach, but each time players bailed him out on the field.

Players he didn’t recruit. That’s the rub.

The easy argument is Mullen took a 2-star recruit in QB Kyle Trask and turned him into an All-American who had the greatest single season in school history. Or that Mullen made an SEC quarterback out of Feleipe Franks.

Or that Mullen developed all of those receivers who were drafted from the 2019-2020 teams and are playing in the NFL.

 

But they also were recruited by former coach Jim McElwain, an utter disaster of a head coach who failed miserably as a developer of talent and recognizing talent (remember Treon Harris over Will Grier?).

They were also players who developed significantly under Mullen andJohnson.

“He’s going to be a head coach in our league one day,” an NFL scout told me of Johnson.

This is Year 4 under Mullen, and this is his team and his recruits. And as important, this is his staff’s development of those players.

If you’re going to praise Mullen for developing Trask, you must criticize him for the play of Emory Jones (12 TDs, 10 INTs) after 4 years in the program. You must question the development of redshirt freshman QB Anthony Richardson, a generational talent who looks lost.

You must turn a critical eye when you hear television bobbleheads proclaim Mullen doesn’t have the “same speed and talent” on the outside, and that’s why the Florida quarterbacks are struggling.

One NFL scout told me former 4-star recruit WR Jacob Copeland is the most underused player in the SEC. “He will play on Sundays,” he said.

WR Xzavier Henderson, like Copeland and WR Justin Shorter, were top-100 recruits. Are we to believe that even when Mullen lands 4- and 5-star recruits, the players are the reason they’re not developing?

This, of course, leads us to the most damning problem of all under Mullen: recruiting.

The state of Florida is 1 of the top 3 states for high school talent (Texas, California), and any Gators coach can win a championship by recruiting the state better than anyone else – something that, frankly, should be a given.

This year alone, 1 player in the top 25 Florida high school players according to 247Sports is committed to the Gators. Only 5 of the top 50 have committed to Florida, and 7 in the top 100 – and we’re less than 6 weeks from National Signing Day.

You win games, you win championships, by procuring elite high school talent and developing it. Mullen wasn’t an elite recruiter at Mississippi State and hasn’t been an elite recruiter at Florida.

That’s not opinion. Those are cold, hard facts.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart said it best after his team whipped Florida on Halloween weekend, when asked about the reason the No. 1-ranked Bulldogs are so dominant this season: “No one can outcoach players.”

3. We should’ve seen this coming, The Epilogue

It is here where we explain the absolute lunacy of the tired thought process, “who are you going to get?” if you fire your current coach.

First and foremost, that philosophy does a remarkable disservice to your players who, more than anything, deserve every opportunity to succeed. It’s also diminishing your product.

Florida is a blue-blood in college football. It has an elite recruiting footprint and unlimited resources. It plays in the best conference in college football and has a history of winning national championships.

The facility issues of the past are gone, with the team set to move into a $100 million standalone football facility next year. Everything is set up for the right coach.

The choice is simple: You believe Mullen will suddenly become a better recruiter with that sparkling new facility behind him, or you believe change is needed.

Change means a $12 million buyout, and landing a coach who embraces the philosophy that Jerry Jeudy should never get out of the state of Florida. Nor should the Bosa brothers, or Amari Cooper, or Derrick Henry or Evan Neal or Jalen Carter. Or so many other program-changers.

It means hiring a coach who, on Day 1, travels to IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., and fixes what’s wrong, what makes all of those elite players leave the state of Florida. It doesn’t matter if a majority of IMG players are from other areas across the country, like Nolan Smith or Kellen Mond.

Once they’re in Florida’s backyard, the coach in Gainesville should have an advantage. When you pay a coach $7.5 million a year, you expect more on your return.

Mel Tucker isn’t letting those IMG players leave the state. He’s not letting the players at Ft. Lauderdale’s legendary St. Thomas Aquinas School look elsewhere. Nor will James Franklin, or Matt Campbell. Or even Lane Kiffin.

Recruiting is about relationships. it’s about building trust and belief in what you’re being sold, and a tangible, embraceable plan.

It’s not about being the smartest guy in the room, and proclaiming a “standard” supersedes all.