Test Time for Star Pupil Mullen

In a sport known for its toughness, and at a school whose logo has a five o'clock shadow and a tougher-than-a-bar-brawl growl, Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen seems almost out of place.

He smiles often, speaks in positives, and exudes nice-guy charisma to the point that you might expect him to have a beeper just in case an elderly woman needs help crossing a street somewhere in Starkville.

Were there not ample evidence to the contrary, it might be hard to believe he's the protégé of Urban Meyer, the brash Florida coach whom he'll face for the first time Saturday.

He is, generally speaking, a nice peg in a surly hole.

But for one night, Mullen, should be perfectly in character. No one was ever cut out for the role of student outsmarting the teacher quite like Meyer's former offensive coordindator.

"The thing that makes Dan unique is that he is smart, I mean really smart" said Meyer, who will try and avoid playing Pete Carroll to Mullen's Steve Sarkisian. "He is very intellectual as far as understanding the game.

"We better be ready."

Like no other coach in the SEC, Mullen looks the part of pupil, from the hair cut that would cost you your lunch money in middle school, to the cool-undermining buttoned top button on his polo shirts, to the boyish grin borrowed from the Beav.

He actually used the word "neat" on at least three occasions when describing the opportunity to play the top-ranked Gators. (Kindly step out of the way of the blitzing Wedgie artist).

All of which makes his longtime partnership with Meyer seem purely odd couple. Mullen's buttoned-up apple couldn't have fallen further from the tree of Meyer, the man who stared back at the nation over the top of his sunglasses on the cover of Sports Illustrated like some sort of too-hip-for Grease extra.

Heck, Meyer brought cool to Utah for the first time in state history.

Mullen would settle for bringing the Bulldogs their first SEC title since the United States joined World War II.

But for 10 years, the duo, who met when Meyer was a receivers coach at Notre Dame in 1999 and Mullen was a graduate assistant, innovated the game and won time and time again with style and swagger.

OK, maybe it was Meyer doing most of the swaggering.

But Mullen has never quite faced a challenge like this. Even if Meyer had joined him on campus, winning at Mississippi State would be a tall task. The school has just one SEC title, in 1941, and hasn't had a coach leave with a winning record since Darrell Royal went 12-8 over two seasons in the mid-50s, before becoming the winningest coach in Texas history.

The Bulldogs are just 3-4 this season, but played Top 25 teams Houston and Georgia Tech tough in their last two losses and came oh-so-close to toppling LSU. Mississippi State had four downs from inside the 2-yard-line against Les Miles' team late in the fourth quarter, but just couldn't convert.

Yet the cow bell chorus is roaring for its new coach. And as they host the nation's top-ranked team for the first time in school history, Mullen is eager to make it a historical double, adding the school's first home win over No. 1.

"If you want to build a championship program," Mullen said. "There's nowhere better to start than to face the champions."

Both coaches have said they will adjust their signals this week, but it likely won't be too hard to figure out what the other is doing. These two different coaches run two similar playbooks with similar sets of priorities and problems.

The Gators are sixth in the nation in rushing offense, the Bulldogs are 12th. Mississippi State struggles to throw the ball, Florida is 67th in the nation in passing and hasn't developed a downfield threat. Both have negative turnover differentials, both have struggled in the red zone. Florida, in fact, has scored just 15 touchdowns in 30 trips inside the 20.

Florida's stumbling offense in the first year without Mullen -- and also without Percy Harvin -- has been a sore spot for Gator fans. Outside of a 41-point effort against Kentucky, Florida is averaging less than 20 points per game in SEC contests.

"We are just maneuvering through a difficult part of the schedule," Meyer said of his team's offensive output, diplomatically, "and trying to get some things worked out."

For Mullen, the difference will be containing Florida's big plays. The Gators haven't exactly figured out how to stretch the field with receivers – fortunate for Bulldogs, as they're 76th in the nation against the pass – but with tailbacks like Jeff Demps and Chris Rainey who may as well drink jet fuel on the sidelines, the big-play threat is always there. The Gators have four running backs with runs over 30 yards this year and seven players with a run of at least 20 yards.

"They've got a lot of weapons and a good offensive system," Mullen said. "When they have that type of speed, if you make one mistake, it turns a 10-yard gain into a 60-yard gain."

And then there's the matter of Tebow, college football's most devastating force, who, by the way, was engineered by Mullen.

"It's going to be a real neat experience [facing Tebow]," Mullen said earlier this year. "When you spend three years of your life -- when you spend more time with Tim Tebow than you do with your own wife -- which I did, you get that close relationship, you know that's something that's not going to change."

What Mullen would like to change is the Gators' undefeated record, which may seem like a mammoth challenge for one of the SEC's least storied program against the head coach that taught him everything.

Then again, there's never been a student as good as Dan Mullen.