STARKVILLE – Nothing like a program-changing win to make a coach start reflecting on his journey.
In the moments following Mississippi State’s 48-31 win over then-No. 6 Texas A&M on Saturday, that’s exactly what MSU coach Dan Mullen did.
“You know what, it’s pretty special,” said Mullen in his postgame press conference, moments after knocking off a second-consecutive top 10 team for the first time in school history. “I’m just so proud of our guys, proud of our effort. When we got here six years ago, there were just so many people that bought in, that believed in what we were doing…There’s going to be a lot of firsts here.”
Under Mullen, those first have already started rolling in. Less than 24 hours after the win over Texas A&M, the Bulldogs climbed to No. 3 in the Associated Press Top 25, the highest ranking in school history. And this weekend, the Bulldogs will host No. 2 Auburn in a matchup pitting two of the nation’s top three teams, again a program first.
So how exactly did Mullen take a program, one that had reached just one bowl game in the previous eight seasons, from Southeastern Conference afterthought to the middle of national championship discussions? It’s a story six years in the making.
Selling the fans
MSU fans were desperate for a winner. Mullen, the offensive coordinator for a pair of national championship teams at the University of Florida, was desperate for an opportunity. The two came together in December of 2008 when Mullen was hired to replace former MSU coach Sylvester Croom. When he arrived in Starkville on Dec. 11, 2008, three weeks before coaching in the BCS national title game in his swan song with the Gators, Mullen inherited a team coming off a 4-8 season, one that had lost to in-state rival Ole Miss 45-0 just weeks earlier.
Looking back, Mullen says the key to jump-starting a struggling program was to get fans on board.
“I remember getting here six years ago,” said Mullen. “And we felt like, to build a winning program, you have to sell the fans first and foremost. It’s not win first and get the fans to come, it’s getting the fans to show up and start believing in the program. That’s when the wins would start to come.”
That momentum begin to built in 2009, Mullen’s first season. Though the wins weren’t abundant, the Bulldogs finished 5-7 overall and 2-5 at home, the seeds were planted for a fan base that is currently enjoying the headiest times in program history.
MSU started a 30-game sellout streak with a 29-19 loss to No. 1 Florida in early October, set a school attendance record with 58,103 against Alabama in November, and the school announced an unprecedented $75 million expansion of Davis Wade Stadium midway through the 2009 season.
“Our fans started believing in what we were doing,” said Mullen. “We started that sellout streak in a season where we went 2-5 at home. Now, Davis Wade Stadium in Starkville, Mississippi has become a difficult place to play. And that’s due to our fanbase.”
The early strides made in connecting with fans soon led to bigger and better things. In addition to the expansion of Davis Wade, MSU also built the Seal Football Complex, a $40 million football-only facility that Mullen and the Bulldogs now call home.
Additionally, the Bulldogs set a new attendance record in this year’s season opener against Southern Mississippi, a record that’s likely to fall this Saturday when the Bulldogs host Auburn.
Getting the players
With the fans in tow, MSU’s program began to show life under Mullen. The Bulldogs followed up 2009’s 5-7 record with a 9-4 campaign in 2010, the first of four straight seasons that have ended with a bowl game. That season was also capped by a 52-14 win over Michigan in the Gator Bowl.
But ultimately, a program can’t reach the lofty perch MSU enjoys without players. And to build a team worthy of competing for a national championship, which is the rarefied spot MSU currently occupies, those players need elite potential.
That’s exactly what Mullen found early in his tenure. Though no one at the time knew it. In 2010, Mullen signed his first full recruiting class in Starkville, a class that was deemed lackluster by all three national recruiting services. The class consisted of 24 signees and was ranked 34th nationally by Rivals.com, 38th by Scout.com and 40th by 247sports.com.
The experts were wrong.
Mullen’s 2010 recruiting class produced 10 starters for the 2014 team, a group that now consists of fifth-year seniors.
The Bulldogs’ 2011 recruiting class was similar. Following up MSU’s 9-4 season, MSU’s Class of ’11 appeared to begin falling apart near the end of the recruiting cycle, as the Bulldogs lost three commitments – Nicholas Brassell, Ole Miss; C.J. Johnson, Ole Miss; Jermaine Whitehead, Auburn) – and the rankings once again belied the true strength of Mullen’s class.
The Bulldogs’ recruiting haul for 2011 ranked 45th on Scout, 44th on Rivals and 34th on 247.sports,com.
But again, the experts were wrong. The 2011 class produced eight starters for this year’s 5-0 team, including the cornerstones for MSU’s offense and defense.
And Mullen found those cornerstones hiding in place where hardly anyone else was looking.
The first was in Haughton, Louisiana, where Mullen, who had previously coached two Heisman Trophy finalists at Utah and Florida, found a three-star project named Dak Prescott.
Prescott, a 6-foot-2, 230-pound dual-threat signal caller, was putting up video game numbers at Haughton High School, as he passed for 4,000 yards and 48 touchdowns as a senior. But the numbers weren’t good enough for nearby LSU, which opted to pass on Prescott until extending an offer late in the recruiting process. Mullen swooped in and got his quarterback of the future.
“We saw a guy with an unbelievable work ethic, a guy who works to get better every single day,” said Mullen of Prescott, who has turned into one of the top players in the country as a redshirt junior. “We saw a guy with great potential for growth, a player we could get in here and really develop. This is a development program. And with his work ethic, we knew he was one of those players who would get better every single day, and those are the players you want.”
About Prescott, Mullen was right. Through five games of his junior season, Prescott has thrown his name into legitimate Heisman Trophy contention with 1,710 yards and 20 total touchdowns through five games.
His back-to-back performances in wins over then-No. 8 LSU and then-No. 6 Texas A&M, Prescott has thrown for 516 yards and four touchdowns while adding 191 rushing yards and four scores. Now one of the SEC’s premier players, Prescott’s decision to stick with MSU despite receiving the late attention from LSU has paid off, and stands out as evidence of Mullen’s ability to build his program brick-by-brick.
“By the time LSU offered, my heart was set on Mississippi State,” Prescott said at SEC Media Days in August. “I just knew I wanted to play for a coach like coach Mullen. With the players he has coached before, with his ability to coach quarterbacks, I knew this was the place for me.”
Like Prescott, Mullen signed his defensive star of the future in the 2011 class. And like Prescott, Mullen found Benardrick McKinney where few others even bothered to look.
A high school quarterback at tiny Rosa Fort High School in Tunica, McKinney was lightly recruited in his senior season, despite having prototypical size (6-4, 230) and speed. That combination of measurables on top of the same intangibles Mullen saw in Prescott resulted in McKinney receiving an offer from MSU. It was McKinney’s only FBS scholarship offer, and the Rosa Fort product committed to MSU in September of 2010.
“He plays with a chip on his shoulder,” said Mullen of McKinney. “He’s absolutely huge for us. I think he was a 2-star recruit out of high school, wasn’t really recruited at all. We saw him, thought, Hey, this guy has got a tremendous ability, has tremendous growth potential. I think he plays with a little bit of that chip on his shoulder that, Hey, I was a pretty good player and nobody even wanted to give me an opportunity, and I want to prove everybody wrong.”
McKinney has done that. Through five games of his redshirt junior season, McKinney leads the Bulldogs with 36 tackles, and he is currently projected as a first round pick in the 2015 NFL Draft.
Stories like McKinney and Prescott, who have become two of the top collegiate players in the country after being largely ignored on the recruiting trail, are emblematic of an MSU roster that is loaded with players of similar backgrounds.
The 2010 class, which has already seen one player reach the NFL (running back Vick Ballard, accounts for nearly half of MSU’s 2014 starters, many who transformed from lightly regarded recruits into key contributors in Starkville. That includes three-fifths of MSU’s starting offensive line – center Dillon Day, guard Ben Beckwith and tackle Blaine Clausell – as well as wide receiver Jameon Lewis, who entered his senior season as the SEC’s leading returning receivers and currently paces the Bulldogs with 15 catches through five games.
“We wanted to be that group,” said Lewis. “We wanted to come in and help change the program. And seeing all the publicity, seeing the new stadium the way it is, it does make me feel proud.”
That 2010 class, which finished 11th in the SEC, also includes defensive lineman Kaleb Eulls, tight end Malcolm Johnson, wide receiver Robert Johnson, linebacker Matt Wells, safety Jay Hughes and cornerback Jamerson Love. All, with the exception of four-star prospect Eulls, were ranked as three-star recruits and all are starters.
Similarly, the 2011 class, which placed 12th in the league according to national experts, has produced eight starters. In addition to Prescott and McKinney, 2011 brought defensive end Preston Smith, the three-time SEC Defensive Lineman of the Week as a senior, to Starkville. The class also produced a starter at defensive tackle (P.J. Jones), cornerback (Taveze Calhoun) and safety (Justin Cox).
For Mullen, the success of the ’10 and ’11 groups speaks to MSU’s philosophy of developing players to their highest potential.
“That’s what we want to build our program on, developing players,” said Mullen. “We want to find the guys who want to work, who want to be great. Those are the guys who are going to be successful in football and in life.”
With the foundation in place, Mullen began to attract recruiting classes that met the approval of recruiting sites more frequently, including the No. 18 class in 2012 and No. 25 in 2013. The 2013 class produced five-star defensive tackle Chris Jones, Mullen’s highest-rated recruit yet.
Through it all, despite starting with classes that failed to garner much national attention, Mullen has built a program that has become a steady producer of NFL talent. Since 2009, the Bulldogs have had 12 players taken in the NFL Draft, the third-highest total in the SEC West during that span.
Starting to roll
Despite the bricks being stacked in the construction of his program, Mullen still ran into obstacles. To date, the nine-win season in 2010 remains the veteran coach’s high-water mark, though the hot start in 2014 has that benchmark in serious jeopardy.
The Bulldogs won seven games in 2011 and 2013, and got off to a 7-0 start in 2012 before finishing 8-4.
But it was late in the 2013 season when the Bulldogs really started rolling. When Prescott got hurt and missed a mid-November game against Alabama, the Bulldogs fell to 4-6 overall and would need consecutive wins over Arkansas and Ole Miss to reach a fourth-straight bowl.
The Bulldogs haven’t lost since.
After an overtime victory at Arkansas to improve to 5-6, Prescott returned from an injury that cost him three games and delivered an inspirational performance in leading the Bulldogs to a 17-10 overtime victory over Ole Miss in the Egg Bowl.
But it was a 44-7 win over Conference-USA champion Rice where MSU began to display what was to come in 2014. Prescott accounted for five touchdowns in that win, one of his first true star-making performances.
“We just came together as a team late last year,” said MSU safety Jay Hughes, who missed the final 11 games of 2013 due to an injury. “We learned how to finish games, we learned how to win. Even though I wasn’t playing, I came to practice and made all the trips, I saw something change.”
That change has seeped into a 2014 start that includes back-to-back wins over top 10 teams, and has MSU on the precipice of one of the best seasons in school history.
For Mullen, it’s the culmination of a dedication to building a program from the ground up, and building it the right way.
“When we got here, we wanted to set a standard,” said Mullen. “That standard was not just about the football field, but it was about the football field, the classroom, the community…We wanted to make this the premier university in Mississippi and the south. Knocking off two top 10 teams, that’s great. But as a team, as a university, as a whole, we hope that’s just the beginning for us.”
Follow Brandon Walker on Twitter @BWonStateBeat
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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