ORLANDO, Fla. — Sung to the tune of “Danny Boy” — the traditional Irish ballad:
“Oh, Danny Boy, the Swamp, the Swamp is calling
From every ardent Gator across our peninsula panorama,
You make nearly $8 million a year, oh Danny Boy,
Now go beat Nick Saban and Alabama!”
OK, let me translate those lyrics into plain English for you:
If Florida Gators football coach Dan Mullen wants to earn, truly earn, that new $7.6 million-a-year contract of his, he can do it very quickly in the third week of the upcoming football season when the dominant, dynastic defending national champion Alabama Crimson Tide — aka Saban’s Cyborgs — come to Gainesville for the sole purpose of performing a Swamp Stomp.
It should be noted that, like Mullen, Saban just signed a new contract extension that will end up paying him $10 million a year through the 2028 season when he will be 77 years old. But nobody argues whether Saban, a seven-time national champion, is worth that much money. Hell, with the millions — if not — billions he has made for Alabama, the SEC and the SEC Network over the years, Saban is probably worth $20 million a year.
Honestly, I’m not really even arguing if Mullen deserves to make his $7.6 million annual salary. After all, he resurrected the Gator program after the Jim McElwain debacle, he’s taken Florida to three straight New Year’s Six bowl games and he’s resuscitated a UF offense that had been comatose for a decade.
But you know what he hasn’t done — ever?
He’s never won a championship.
In a dozen years as a head coach in the SEC, he’s never won a conference title. Granted, most of those years were spent in Mississippi where publicly displayed Confederate monuments outnumber SEC championships by 131 to 7. Ole Miss has won six SEC championships in its history, but none since 1963. Mississippi State, where Mullen coached for nine seasons, has won just one SEC Championship in its history and that came in 1941.
Still, it’s hard to comprehend why Mullen is now the fourth-highest paid coach in college football (behind Saban, LSU’s Ed Orgeron and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney) — all of whom have won national championships. How can Mullen be making more than Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher and Kirby Smart, both of whom have more impressive résumés. Fisher, of course, won a national title at FSU and Smart played for a national championship at Georgia and is 2-1 against Mullen in their three meetings.
Then again, Smart and Fisher are probably ecstatic that Mullen’s raise and extension put him ahead of them in the SEC’s salary hierarchy. You know it’s only a matter of time before the athletics directors at Texas A&M and Georgia bump up Fisher’s and Smart’s salary ahead of Mullen’s.
In the SEC, coaching salaries aren’t just about merit; they’re about ego. Coaching salaries in the SEC are a status symbol; sort of like stadium size used to be (Hey, let’s add more seats whether we need them or not!!!) I’ve always found it comical (and wasteful) how SEC programs pay their football coaches overinflated salaries and give overinflated extensions when they don’t have to. Exhibit A: Four years ago, Tennessee hired Alabama assistant coach Jeremy Pruitt and gave him a six-year contract worth $4 million a year when they could have easily paid the first-year head coach $2 million a year and he would have jumped at the opportunity.
To make matters worse, Tennessee gave Pruitt a two-year contract extension and a $500,000 raise before the start of last season after he went 5-7 and 8-5 in his first two years. And then — oopsy! — the Vols ended up firing Pruitt after last season when he went 3-7 and reportedly committed numerous serious NCAA violations.
But I digress.
Pruitt and Mullen have little in common except, of course, that Mullen also was involved in recruiting violations last season and received a one-year show-cause penalty from the NCAA. Which is presumably why Mullen didn’t receive his belated contract extension until a few weeks ago. Florida AD Scott Stricklin probably figured — and rightfully so — it would send the wrong message if he gave Mullen a contract extension right after the coach got his wrist slapped by the NCAA. It also didn’t help that Mullen’s bizarre behavior last season didn’t sit well with Stricklin and other UF administrators.
When asked about his relationship with Stricklin recently, Mullen replied: “Scott and I have a great relationship and I love everybody questioning everything and where our relationship is at. I want to tell you, that hasn’t wavered. That never wavered. It was nothing we wanted to dive into and play things out in the media as we were working on the contract extension. … I think people kind of blew this up a lot more than it was. … I think now everybody sees where the relationship is, how we work together, and both of our long term commitments to being here at Florida and making this program what it needs to be.”
And what UF’s program needs to be is champions of the SEC.
And we all know what must be done to make that happen.
“Oh, Danny Boy, the Swamp, the Swamp is calling
The fans are a-hollerin, and some are even using bad gramma.
Ain’t nobody gonna hold that $8 million a year agin you, oh Danny Boy,
As long as in Week 3, you can beat Alabama!”
