Dan Mullen didn’t hold back when talking about his time at Florida. The day after Billy Napier got fired as Gators head coach, Mullen sat down with Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wolken in his UNLV office and let it rip about how Florida treated him versus his successor. Now coaching the Rebels to a 6-1 start, Dan Mullen clearly hasn’t forgotten the resources, or lack thereof, he dealt with in Gainesville.​

The dig was pointed and direct. “Are they going to give the next guy a lot more than they gave him, as far as resources? Me, right?” Mullen told Wolken. “I mean, like, everything was, ‘No.’ And then everything I asked for, they said, ‘Here you go’ to the next person. So what’s the plan to make it better? Not that, then what? They doubled the salary pool [for Napier] to hire coaches and staff members. I was always told no. Everything was no.”

The numbers back him up. Mullen worked with a $6.1 million assistant coach salary pool, while Napier got $7.5 million to work with, plus another $5 million for off-field staff. That’s a pretty massive difference, and Dan Mullen clearly hasn’t forgotten.​His Florida tenure started hot and ended cold. The Gators went 10-3 in his first season in 2018, then followed it up with an 11-2 campaign in 2019 that landed the Gators at No. 6 in the AP Poll. It was their highest finish in a decade.

The 2020 season saw an 8-4 record and a trip to the SEC Championship Game. He gave Florida three straight New Year’s Six bowl appearances. But everything unraveled in 2021 when the Gators stumbled to 5-6, losing four straight to Power 5 opponents before athletic director Scott Stricklin pulled the plug after an overtime loss to Missouri.​

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Florida went big-game hunting after firing Mullen and landed on Billy Napier. Napier was the Sun Belt Conference Coach of the Year, who’d gone 40-12 at Louisiana. The Gators gave him a starting salary of $7.1 million per year and opened up the checkbook for his staff in ways they never did for Dan Mullen. But Napier never got it going in Gainesville. He went 6-7 in his first year, 5-7 in his second. And despite an 8-5 bounce-back season in 2024, the wheels came off again in 2025. His 22-23 overall record was the worst winning percentage by a Florida coach since 1949.​

The Gators finally cut ties with Napier on October 19, 2025, a day after a sloppy 23-21 win over Mississippi State, where fans booed him off the field. The move came with a $21 million buyout, half due within 30 days. Meaning Florida is now paying three different head coaches at the same time since they’re still cutting checks to Mullen, too. 

For Mullen, now thriving at UNLV, the timing of the interview couldn’t have been more perfect to finally air out his grievances about how Florida never gave him what they handed to the guy who followed him.​

Mullen had the answer all along

Dan Mullen actually told Florida exactly who they should hire when they fired him. Back in 2024, Mullen revealed on The Zach Gelb Show that when he got let go in 2021, he looked athletic director Scott Stricklin dead in the eye and said, “I’d go hire Lane Kiffin right now.” His reasoning was solid, too.

Kiffin runs a high-octane offense that Florida fans love. He would’ve walked into a situation with Anthony Richardson (a future top-five NFL draft pick) at quarterback, and the Gators already had explosive receivers on the roster. Instead, Florida went with Napier, and well, we know how that turned out.​

The timing makes Mullen look like a prophet. Since taking over Ole Miss in 2020, Kiffin has built the Rebels into a legitimate playoff contender. He went 50-18 overall with multiple 10-win seasons. He’s 5-6 against top-10 teams, including wins over No. 2 Georgia last season and taking down No. 4 LSU this year.

Ole Miss sits at 6-1 and is firmly in the College Football Playoff conversation. This was exactly the sustained success Florida thought they were getting when they dumped Mullen. Mullen even admitted that Kiffin “probably would have taken the job if it were offered to him” back in 2021, but now with Ole Miss in playoff contention, it’s a much tougher sell.​

So now Florida finds itself in the exact same position it was in four years ago. Except this time, they’ve burned through an extra $21 million on Napier’s buyout and fallen further behind in the SEC arms race. The irony isn’t lost on anyone.