His brothers left Florida to become college stars. Latest Mullen wants to give UM chance
When his two older brothers speak, Trevell Mullen tends to listen.
Trayvon Mullen was a star cornerback for the Clemson Tigers and a first-round pick by the Oakland Raiders in the 2019 NFL Draft. Tiawan Mullen is on the same sort of track after earning first-team All-America honors as a freshman for the Indiana Hoosiers last year. When they told him to run track, Mullen signed up for track and field. When they told him to worry most about academics, he took their advice seriously.
“You know I’m always going to listen,” Mullen said Thursday in Coconut Creek. “They made it far and I know the stuff they did.”
The big question he faces these days is whether he’ll follow his older brothers paths when he’s picking a college.
Indiana is on Mullen’s short list of suitors after his older brother put the Hoosiers on his radar. He wants to check out far-flung campuses and visit teams like the Penn State Nittany Lions, Oregon Ducks and maybe the West Virginia Mountaineers.
When his recruiting process begins in earnest next month, Mullen will start close to home, though. Like so many of South Florida’s top prospects for the Class of 2022, Mullen will be in Coral Gables as soon as the dead period ends on the first day of June for an unofficial visit with the Miami Hurricanes.
For so long, Mullen has heard about how he should get out of Florida and get away from home for college, but the four-star cornerback wants to give Miami a hard look.
“Most people around me get out of Florida just because of how I grew up and what I grew up around,” said Mullen, who’s the No. 20 corner in the country, according to the 247Sports.com composite rankings. “I’m from Broward County, Florida. I’m not from Miami, so I just want to see if it’s different or not. Even though people tell you to get out, I just want to give Miami a chance.”
Mullen put out a top five last year and the Hurricanes were on the list, along with Indiana, Penn State, West Virginia and the Syracuse Orange. Some schools have come — the Florida State Seminoles and Florida Gators are both in contact — and Syracuse has mostly slipped into the background, but Miami remains a major suitor for the Coconut Creek defensive back, even if his first instinct is to look at out-of-state options.
“Some people — they don’t really know what they want to do. They don’t know if they want to stay here because their family’s here,” Mullen said. “Most people want to see different stuff because they’ve been in Florida all their life. That’s what I want to do, too, but at the same time I want to give the crib a chance because if I go to a visit up there and I don’t feel comfortable, I feel like it’s not home and I feel like the crib’s home, that can be my decision.”
Mullen said he talks to cornerbacks coach DeMarcus Van Dyke and defensive backs coach Travaris Robinson regularly, although they don’t talk every day. His visit next month will go a long way in determining his interest in the Hurricanes. Mullen has never visited as a recruit, he said, and hasn’t been to campus since Miami was recruiting his older brother, so he doesn’t have much of a feel for the current state of the program.
After he visits the Hurricanes, Mullen is set to attend a camp at Florida State on the second weekend of June, then visit Florida a few days later. While he doesn’t have a scholarship offer from the Seminoles, Mullen hopes he’ll earn one next month.
He has one official visit lined up so far with the Hoosiers for the third weekend of June and he said he “always wanted to take a visit” to Oregon because it was his first offer, so he’s working on setting up official visits with the Ducks and Nittany Lions.
Mullen does feel some pull from his brother at Indiana, but he’s mostly drawn by the on-field success it had in 2020.
“Until my brother actually went there and then I started seeing him playing, and then they had a great season,” Mullen said. “that’s what really made me look into Indiana. Not just because my brother went there, but because of the stuff they did.”
Originally, Mullen was targeting June to make a commitment, but he knows he definitely wants to visit Penn State before he makes any final decision, which could push his timeline deeper into the summer.
Mostly, he’s just excited to start diving into the decision-making process.
“Thankfully, the pandemic slowed down, everybody gets to take visits and we get to go everywhere, and show our talent at the camps and 7-on-7,” Mullen said. “Last year was tough for everybody.”
This story was originally published May 12, 2021 at 10:26 AM.
