Florida Gators coach Dan Mullen gets a three-year contract extension. Here are the details
Florida Gators football coach Dan Mullen is sticking around Gainesville a bit longer.
UF signed Mullen to a three-year contract extension worth an additional $1.5 million annually, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
The deal was signed in early May, according to the AP, with the school revealing the details following a public records request.
“Dan has done a tremendous job in his three seasons at Florida, and we are fortunate to have someone with his obvious talents and head coaching experience leading our football program,” Florida athletics director Scott Stricklin said in a statement, according to multiple reports.
“I look forward to working alongside him to support his vision for Gators football and our student-athletes for many years.”
Mullen, 49, is coming off a 2020 season that saw his team struggle with a three-game losing streak, which included a Cotton Bowl loss to Oklahoma.
Mullen’s contract extension does not begin until the 2022 season, the Orlando Sentinel reported. However, Mullen will receive “a $500,000 signing bonus July 1 and a $1 million retention incentive on Dec. 1,” according to the news outlet.
Mullen’s deal sees his salary increase to $7.6 million through the 2027 season, according to multiple reports, to make him the third-highest paid coach in the SEC behind Alabama’s Nick Saban and LSU’s Ed Orgeron.
Other details of the contract extension, according to the AP and Orlando Sentinel include:
- The deal has a $12 million buyout clause, with Mullen receiving half the money within 30 days and the rest during the next six years in annual payments.
- If Mullen wants out of the deal, he would owe the school $2 million.
The extension has a $4.5 million base salary, $1.75 million in media/PR income, $700,000 in equipment-related compensation and $350,000 in money from the school’s Nike contract.
Mullen has access to a $200,000 expense account and $70,000 in airplane use, though whatever is unused reverts to the University Athletic Association. Mullen will receive $34,200 in annual pension contributions.
“We are very excited about the future of the Florida football program, and this agreement allows us to continue to build on the success we have enjoyed on and off the field,” Mullen said, according to multiple outlets.
Mullen is 29-9 with the Gators, with UF reaching New Year’s Six Bowl games three consecutive years. But, in addition to the three straight losses to close out the 2020 season, Mullen had some controversy, too, last fall.
He was blasted for his “pack the Swamp” with 90,000 fans comments, due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, following a loss at Texas A&M. Mullen was one of 31 people in the program to test positive for the novel coronavirus, which led to the program shutting down for two weeks, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
The SEC fined Mullen $25,000 for his conduct and role in a benches-clearing brawl against Missouri in late October, while the NCAA put the Gators on NCAA probation for the first time in 30 years in December when they said “Mullen had failed to ‘promote an atmosphere of compliance’ for having impermissible contact with a recruit in Seattle and allowing impermissible contact with seven teams that stopped in Gainesville on their way to an event in Tampa,” the AP reported. Mullen was given a show cause penalty.
