Dan Mullen was diagnosed with Covid-19 this week.
You would think that would come with people wishing the coach well. After all, this is a disease that has infected over eight million Americans thus far (way more if you believe the CDC). New cases are spiking in the U.S. and across Europe. Nobody has figured out how to arrest it’s spread.
You might think that it would be a time for reflection. After all, even though cases have been spiking now for over a month, the corresponding spike in deaths that we’ve typically seen two or three weeks after the spike hasn’t come yet (and hopefully never does).
Instead, it has become a platform for people to bash Mullen and connect his diagnosis with his comments after the Texas A&M game.
You have Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel, claiming not to pile on Mullen while writing an article that sports the headline, “Florida’s Dan Mullen learns the hard way about COVID-19.” You have every single article referencing Mullen’s diagnosis also referencing his comments to “pack the Swamp.” And you have the Lincoln Project putting out whatever the hell this is.
Trump drained the swamp, just not the one he promised. pic.twitter.com/ryJdDW3QCE
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 18, 2020
Look, I think what Mullen said was stupid. I said so on Gators Breakdown last week before we knew about the positive tests. I didn’t think it was wise to throw that kind of shade at Scott Stricklin and Kent Fuchs, who I didn’t think would appreciate having to re-answer questions about pandemic control with added pressure from their head coach.
It also probably wasn’t wise to wade into a political hot-button issue that would divide a fan base that would normally only say a negative thing about Mullen if he loses to Georgia for the third straight year.
But that’s who Mullen is.
He’s certainly not afraid of going after rivals. Mullen made up the attendance number at the 2018 spring game as an elaborate troll of the last time Georgia won a championship. He took veiled shots at Kirby Smart and the kinds of things he’s promising recruits after Justin Fields transferred, and then had those very things throw back in his face with the transfer of defensive back Chris Steele. And he was certainly no stranger to taking shots at Mississippi when he was the head guy at Mississippi State.
He’s also not afraid of touching political issues, as he has been one of the more vocal coaches regarding the Black Lives Matter movement. Whatever you believe regarding that topic, you have to admit that it is both political and highly charged so it isn’t a huge surprise to see him wade into political waters yet again.
And he’s not afraid of ticking off the people who should be his most ardent supporters. In the case of Covid-19, we’re talking about his athletic director and University president. But he’s gone after Florida fans as well in the past, asserting in 2018 that they weren’t pulling their weight.
When it comes to football-related stuff, I think criticizing the brashness of Mullen is fair game. I actually suspect that’s a big reason why he may struggle with high-end recruits as often they’re going to want to hear endless platitudes and that just doesn’t seem like what Dan Mullen does.
But when it comes to off-field stuff, I’ve been pretty consistent. I don’t believe Urban Meyer should be making judgment calls about domestic violence incidents. I don’t think that college football should be putting important societal decisions into coaches’ hands when they clearly have incentive structures set up to push winning at all costs.
The same is true of a pandemic.
Mullen may agree with Governor DeSantis’ allowance of full stadiums in the state. He may think there’s no harm to come from having 90,000 fans rocking the Swamp. That number of fans may give Florida a significant advantage for his team and getting the ‘W’. And he may even be dumb enough to say it publicly when all fans want to hear is “Todd Grantham has to do a better job, or else.”
But thankfully in this case, Covid-19 policy has been left to the experts instead of to head football coaches. Doctors and university officials coming together to decide what they think is best, regardless of what is best for the football team.
The implication by the media with headlines that call out Mullen “learning the hard way” is that he wasn’t taking pandemic protocols seriously. Maybe that’s true, but I haven’t seen any evidence to that fact, and his program wasn’t fined by the SEC for violating those protocols like some others were this past week.
It turns out that Covid-19 is a highly transmissible disease that has canceled Major League Baseball games, NFL games and college football games. Just because people care about the SEC more than those other leagues doesn’t mean this outbreak is any different.
If Mullen ignored Covid protocols, he should get the hammer brought down on him. But if a couple of guys thought they were suffering from allergies last week and instead spread the virus to the team on the trip to Texas, welcome to 2020 for every single person on the globe.
There’s a lot of focus on what Mullen said after the Texas A&M game. But maybe we should focus on what he said when he released his statement regarding Covid-19.
“Thankfully, everyone impacted is recovering well and has experienced mild to no symptoms.”
We should be thankful for that.
But we should also be mindful of the fact that during an unprecedented pandemic (at least in our lifetimes), we’re all subject to good and bad days. Most of them don’t come in front of a camera after a hard loss to a team you think you’re better than, but I’m sure we can all think of a time since March where we needed some grace for something we did or said wrong.
Perhaps the media could extend the same grace to Dan Mullen.