After an embarrassing loss to Georgia, the Dan Mullen press conference today was exactly the opposite of what a coach should do to save his job.
Sharks are circling under Dan Mullen and he’s not making it any easier on himself.
The Florida football coach canceled media availability for his team and cut his Monday press conference short.
He may have been better off not making that appearance at all because he had major foot-in-mouth moment before it was over.
Dan Mullen press conference today: “We’ll do recruiting after the season”
Mullen came under fire for a particular answer about recruiting
“We’re in the season now. We’ll do recruiting after the season — when it gets to recruiting time we can talk about recruiting,” Mullen said.
https://twitter.com/dayneyoung/status/1455223370031767558?s=20
The quote on its face is damning. Florida isn’t recruiting during the season? That would be madness.
A more generous interpretation of the quote is that Mullen isn’t interested in talking about recruiting during the season.
The latter option seems the more likely one, but the difference between Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Mullen was immediately noted.
Mullen may not want to talk about recruiting but recruiting never goes away. Part of it is putting on a strong front at all times. Smart answered questions about recruiting immediately after a game. Mullen’s refusal just came off as weak, even without the firestorm of “Florida isn’t recruiting during the season” meme hitting Twitter.
With just two wins against his last nine FBS opponents, Mullen is in serious trouble at Florida. Nothing he could say would get him out of it. It takes wins to hold off the executioner’s blade. However, you can definitely hasten the ax by making a fool out of yourself in the media. Mullen is doing just that.
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