HOOVER, Ala. – Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen is the longest-tenured head football coach in the Southeastern Conference not named Nick Saban.
The Bulldogs are 61-42 through Mullen’s first eight years and have qualified for seven consecutive bowl games, including an Orange Bowl trip after a 2014 season in which they spent several weeks at No. 1. The program’s winningest coach since Allyn McKeen went 65-19-3 from 1939 to 1948 and guided the Bulldogs to their only SEC title in 1941, Mullen was asked a simple yet interesting question Tuesday at SEC media days.
Is this as good as it gets for the MSU program, which is just 29-35 in the vicious Western Division during his time there?
“My life has no finish line, and I tell the players that,” Mullen said. “There is no finish line, so we’re always striving to get better in everything that we do every single day to reach our potential and be the best that we can be. There’s obviously a lot more ahead of us.
“We have not won the West yet. We have not won an SEC championship. We have not won a national championship yet, so there’s an awful lot ahead on the table of goals that we want to achieve as a program.”