UNLV Rebels Head Coach Dan Mullen Says "UNLV Is Such A Unique Job"

With all the talk about UNLV Rebels head coach potentially being a candidate for the now vacant UCLA Bruins job, it is worth mentioning exactly why Mullen decided to take the Rebels job in the first place. He wasn't a coach who was looking for a job; teams were coming to him. He waited for the right opportunity, and that's why he is in Las Vegas. No one should assume that he would just take the UCLA job if it's offered to him because they are in the Big 10. Mullen could just decide that UNLV is where he wants to be.

Recently, Mullen told Jim Rome why he returned to coaching and why UNLV is where he wanted to be.

.@CoachDanMullen reflects on his three years away from coaching and why @unlvfootball was the right opportunity. pic.twitter.com/zpHqkennzx
— Jim Rome (@jimrome) September 11, 2025

UNLV Head Coach Dan Mullen On Why He Returned To Coaching

“Obviously, left Florida, not how I want to finish my coaching career,” Mullen said. “Go over to ESPN. I had a good time calling ball. … I’d go and call the game and they were like, ‘Hey, you know about football?’ I’m like, I could probably figure it out. And no, we had a great time, great people. Some fun crews. … You have to have the right deal. So all of a sudden, last year, had a couple of reunions. You had the 10th year anniversary of Mississippi State being one. Alex Smith, who I coached, got in College Football Hall of Fame. You get around all the players, and they talk about, coach, all the impacts you make on their lives.

And then it starts to hit you. Now, listen, I miss the ballpark, being around the coaches, the staff, all of that stuff. But really, the biggest part, when you get around the players and they talk about, ‘Coach, you made such an impact on our lives.’ Nothing against what I was doing at ESPN, I really wasn’t making making an impact on anybody’s life. So I had that juice, had that energy. But it had to be the right job.”

Mullen On Why UNLV Was The Right Job For Him

“We’d go call a game on a Thursday night game, and those guys be looking at me and I’d get going. They’d see the fire and you just like, hey, you kind of missed that part. But it always had to be the right situation. UNLV is such a unique job. … When I looked at things, one, I wanted to come in. I want to have to start from scratch. UNLV won 11 games last year, play at Allegiant Stadium. Didn’t have to come in and build a stadium. We have unbelievable facilities. … The facilities are unbelievable. The Fertitta family put a lot of money in the football, the Fertitta Complex.

So I was looking at different jobs and I’m like, every job that came up over the last three years, I was trying to talk myself into good reasons to go. UNLV, I was trying to talk about, give me the bad reasons to go. And I’m like, okay, we have facilities. We can win a championship. If we win the Mountain West championship – heck, Boise State got a bye last year. We got to buy and we’re in the playoffs. And I can recruit here because it’s Vegas.”

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