Dan Mullen opens up on Georgia's off-field problems
Despite the program’s recent on-field success, Georgia has faced a myriad of problems during this offseason that stem from off-field incidents. Most of those incident themselves relate to speeding violations committed by football players.
Recently, former Mississippi State and Florida head coach Dan Mullen shared his thoughts on these off-field problems.
“I think one of the things, and not to make excuses, there’s two issues,” Mullen said on the Matt Barrie Show. “One, in college football, a head coach is really responsible for everything, you know? In the offseason, if a player in the NFL gets in trouble, it’s player based. It’s ‘It must be this guy or that.’ It very rarely goes to the head coach. Maybe goes to the organization as a whole, but not directly to the head coach.”
As Mullen explained, there is a key difference between being an NFL and a college coach. When you’re the college coach, you tend to be held accountable for the actions of college students. Whether a college student is an athlete under a microscope or not, they are liable to make bad decisions.
“College football, everything gets thrown directly at the head coach, and I think that’s tough. That’s a huge responsibility. Now, you get to deal with it and usually there’s one voice coming out when that stuff happens,” Mullen said.
“What you have to remember is these guys, a lot of them, are 18 to 22 year old kids. I know because of the hype, because how big college football, because of what it is that sometimes these guys seem larger than life, but I always say this, if you really remember back — now I know you weren’t this type of guy — between the days at Arizona State where you spent the majority of the time in the library, right? I mean, Saturday you might go out for a nice little dinner and then get some late night studying in, sleeping so you can get good rest for the next coming week. But if you remember, 18 to 22 year old kids, the processing of information, everything I talk about with our team is decision making.”
Mullen emphasized how important decision making is for young players and how important it was to him as a coach to teach good decision making.
“If you think decision making, decision making, decision making. I always thought, if I can teach these 18 to 22 year olds, if I can teach you how to be a good decision maker in life, walking out the door, you have the best chance to be successful. More important than reading coverage on third down because you want to help kids in life, make good decisions.”
That doesn’t mean that there are no issues at Georgia or that they can’t be handled differently, though, as Mullen explained.
“So, I think there are issues, but what you have to remember is these guys are held to a much higher standard, they’re under a bigger spotlight, and a lot of them have huge goals. You got to say, ‘Hey, every decision you make, how’s it going to affect you and your teammates? How’s it going to affect your family? How does it affect your long-term goals in life?’ If you can make decisions off of that, we have a chance to at least curb behavior,” Mullen said.
“Second, if you know that someone else on the team is doing something that is out of line of our overall goals of success, help them and reel them back into making positive decisions. To say nothing is going to happen is impossible. Say, ‘Let’s try to make the best decisions possible.'”
Kirby Smart on the off-field perception at Georgia
While at SEC media days, Kirby Smart faced questions about the off-field issues that the Georgia program has dealt with recently. However, he remains confident with his players, despite all the attention that they’re receiving.
“I would say talk to any of the players within our organization,” Smart said. “Talk to the retention rate that we keep with our players. Our players respect the fact that they’re under a microscope and that they always will be as athlete. But we’ve got one of the highest-character, highest GPA, one of the best teams we’ve had. I’m very confident about our team and our culture.”