Mississippi State is atop the college football world, No. 1 in both major polls, and Bulldogs fans are understandably enamored with coach Dan Mullen.
Megan Mullen is perhaps the one they should be thanking.
Toledoans may remember her as Megan West, the weekend anchor/sports reporter for WNWO (Ch. 24) from 2000-2002.
That’s when she met Mullen, then the quarterbacks coach at Bowling Green under head coach Urban Meyer.
The next stop was Utah, him to coach football, her to work at a Fox affiliate in Salt Lake City. Then came Florida, him to coach football, her to work for the Golf Channel. Then came marriage and a first baby on the way and a late-night interview with Mississippi State officials at a hotel in Atlanta.
“Dan called at 1:30 in the morning and said, ‘The job is ours if we want it.’ But he was so worried,” Megan recalled in a phone conversation this week.
There was much to worry about, Starkville being so far off the beaten path that the nearest shopping mall is some 60 miles away in Tupelo. And the MSU football program was even farther off the beaten path. It was a lousy job in a suicidal division of the toughest conference in the nation.
But that wasn’t the biggest immediate worry. Football coaches always figure they can fix the mess. The real issue was that Mullen couldn’t see the mess.
“He told me they wanted a quick answer and that he’d be taking the job sight-unseen,” Megan said. “Mississippi State was one of, I think, three places in the SEC where Florida hadn’t played since Dan had been there. He’d never seen the facilities or the campus or the town. I told him it was OK, that I had been there.”
In 2006, the Golf Channel assigned Megan to cover the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur tournament at a course called Old Waverly in West Point, Miss. It is one of golf’s hidden gems and, like most people who see it for the first time, Megan fell in love with the place. She was there for four days and drove to nearby Starkville for dinner a couple of those nights.
“It’s the sweetest, quaint southern town,” she said. “It’s a beautiful area with nice people. I had the time of my life for four days. So, I kept telling Dan I’d been there. He said, ‘Yeah, what’s your point?’ I said my point is to take the job because we’d get to golf at Old Waverly.
“I can tell you that if I hadn’t been here before, I don’t know if we’d be here now.”
So, in large part on his wife’s say-so, Mullen took the job and headed to the land of the cowbell. And then he fixed the mess, inheriting a program that had compiled a 29-65 record, including a 13-51 mark in SEC play, the previous eight seasons.
Now in his sixth season, Mullen is 42-28 with three bowl wins in four trips. The Bulldogs were unranked entering this season, but after successive convincing wins against No. 8 LSU, No. 6 Texas A&M, and No. 2 Auburn jumped all the way to No. 1 for the first time in school history.
“It’s been just incredible,” Megan said. “The people down here and the kids in the program deserve it so much. Dan was on Urban’s staff for two national championships at Florida and he’ll tell you these kids work just as hard, or harder, than those kids did at Florida. These kids have such tremendous values.
“What has happened here is so awesome it’s hard to describe. I mean, I get emotional. People wondered why he would leave Florida with [Tim] Tebow there and another national championship on the way. Well, the belief that he could do something like this here is why. From Day 1, Dan got these kids to believe they could win. Now, they expect to win.”
Toledo was the site of Megan West’s second TV job — “I was in Maryland making $14,600 and I doubled my salary at WNWO, so I thought I’d hit the big time” — and she signed off of her sports segment one night by inviting viewers to email the station with story ideas or suggestions.
Dan Mullen was watching from his apartment and he emailed a suggestion: The two of them should go on a dinner date. To make a very long story short, they’ve been together pretty much ever since.
Now, Mullen has the No. 1-ranked team in the nation, a legit Heisman Trophy candidate in quarterback Dak Prescott, and he is arguably the hottest name in coaching’s musical chairs rumor mill.
Regardless of what the future brings, the present is about as good as it gets for Mullen, Megan, son Canon, and daughter Breelyn.
The state is in football frenzy — rival Ole Miss is also unbeaten and ranked No. 3 — and the traditional cowbells are rocking the old stadium in Starkville. And when the Mullens want to escape the noise, they can get a tee time at Old Waverly whenever they want.
Contact Blade sports columnist Dave Hackenberg at: dhack@theblade.com or 419-724-6398.
First Published October 17, 2014, 4:03 a.m.
