These again. We're skipping Harbaugh because it's not like you need to be told about Harbaugh. In the event M does hire him, he'll get one.

These are in approximate order of personal preference.

Nationally, Dan Mullen is regarded as the best available-ish college head coach in the market this year. This admiration has not extended to all corners of the Michigan fanbase for… reasons. Foremost amongst them are:

• "He's a one-year wonder." (Who won two national championships at Florida as the primary play-caller and has built MSU into a contender in the toughest division in the country.)
• "He's not a cultural fit." (He's from Pennsylvania and GA'd at ND. Hell, he coached at Columbia.)
• "He runs the spread." (You have just slashed out 80% of plausible options. Also, Chris Leak was as mobile as a plant.)
• "He's never won for real for real." (At the Indiana of the SEC.)

Mississippi State's winning percentage before Dan Mullen arrived was… not good. In the decade before his arrivals this was their power conference peer group:

Bulldog futility goes further back than that; you have to go back to the 50s before you find a MSU head coach capable of consistently keeping the Bulldogs above .500. His winning percentage of 60.5% is in the WVU-Miami-Utah-Iowa range and is virtually unprecedented. It's also better than Michigan's over the same time frame. At Mississippi State.

So.

Reasons for hiring or not hiring a coach are not made in a vacuum, so if you'd like to make one of these arguments you have to bring along a guy who has a better resume than Dan Mullen. Gary Patterson? Sure! I'm totally down with Gary Patterson if you can crowbar him out of TCU, but you can't. Given the hires Nebraska and Florida just made I don't think anyone who could-might-kinda be available is. That leaves Dan Mullen and…

Seriously, I don't know. Mullen is the default college head coach choice. Fortunately, he seems like a pretty good one.

[After THE JUMP: the anti-Borges at QB, overblown oversigning concerns, and CEO stuff.]

Xs and Os Proficiency

Mullen came up with Urban Meyer. He was a grad assistant at ND when Meyer was the WR coach there, and then followed him through all his stops until getting the Mississippi State job. His track record as a QB coach and offensive coordinator is truly impressive. Mullen's QBs:

• JOSH HARRIS, BGSU. Meyer inherited Andy Sahm, a pocket guy a year older than Harris, and Mullen eventually molded him to a quality starter. He took over the full time job in 2002, with a 6.9 YPA, 737 rushing yards, and a whopping 39 touchdowns as BGSU took down Missouri and Kansas as a MAC team. Harris had a standout senior season the year after Meyer and Mullen went to Utah and got drafted.
• ALEX SMITH, UTAH. Smith had four attempts as a true freshman; upon Meyer and Mullen's arrival he blew up, passing for 8.4 YPA as a true sophomore and 9.3 as a junior; that junior campaign also saw him complete 68% of his passes with a nutty 32:4 TD:INT ratio. Oh, and run for 600 yards. Utah went undefeated, beating Texas A&M, Arizona, North Carolina, and Pitt in the Fiesta Bowl. Smith was the top pick in the ensuing NFL Draft.
• CHRIS LEAK, FLORIDA. Leak had already started for Florida for two years under Ron Zook; he never really fit the Meyer run/pass mold but complted 63 and 64 percent of his passes as an upperclassman with decent YPA and TD:INT ratios as Florida won a national title in 2006.
• TIM TEBOW, FLORIDA. I probably don't have to remind you of TEBOW TEBOW TEBOW's college career. Mostly a Belldozer QB/tank as a freshman, Tebow put up insane stats as a full time starter: 9.4 YPA, 32:6 TD:INT as a sophomore, 9.2 and 30:4 as a junior, with a total of 1600 rushing yards those two years. Mullen left for Mississippi State after 2008; Scot Loeffler was brought in to turn Tebow into Tom Brady, a process that didn't seem to impact his college stats much (9.2 YPA as a senior) but also did not work. Tebow was a first round draft pick and ESPN hype factory who eventually washed out because he was a rhino masquerading as an NFL QB.
• TYSON LEE, MSU. Mediocre inherited pocket passer. Did bump YPA from 5.8 to 6.5 as a senior in Mullen year 1.
• CHRIS RELF, MSU. Middling inherited bulky dual-threat who once obliterated M. "One of the lowest-rated QB prospects" to start an SEC game after the rise of rankings, Mullen was very careful with his passing on team that ran almost 70% of the time at a rather decent 4.5 YPC; Relf had 8.1 YPA as a result in Mullen year two. Relf fell off significantly as a senior and was platooned with…
• TYLER RUSSELL, MSU. Mildly touted pocket guy was recruited by Croom and kept on, had a decent junior year (59%, 7.4 YPA, 24:10 TD:INT) and then blew out his shoulder in his senior year opener; he came back sporadically when the next guy came down with his own shoulder issues.
• DAK PRESCOTT, MSU. The first Mullen-recruited QB to play for him at MSU had a rickety redshirt sophomore campaign (7.3 YPA, 10:7 TD-INT) after being forced into the lineup by Russell's shoulder issues; did run for over 800 yards. This year Prescott blew up (61%, 8.7 YPA, 24:10 TD INT, 900 rushing yards) into a fringe Heisman candidate as the Bulldogs took it to most of the SEC that was not Alabama.

Mullen had four straight highly productive QBs before he got to MSU and then scraped average production out of a couple of iffy prospects before Prescott blew up this year. FWIW, at Florida Mullen was the primary playcaller; this is not a Chip/Brian Kelly situation where the HC is also the de-facto OC.

As far as his offenses have gone:

[2008 Mississippi State was Sylvester Croom's last team, included for comparison's sake.]

Mullen walked into one of the worst possible situations and immediately made it better. He maintained improved but average-at-best performance except for 2011, when he had a pocket passer, before a true breakout 2014—the first year he had an experienced QB he recruited available. At Florida his offenses were lights-out after an adjustment year in which they figured out Chris Leak was dyslexic.

No, this isn't like Brady Hoke's one good year at Ball State. Ball State is historically a slightly above .500 MAC school and Hoke had them performing at or below that number until his annus mirabilus. Mullen was already outperforming by some distance before this year. Also…

THE MAC IS

NOT

THE SEC

and Brady Hoke didn't win multiple NCs as an offensive coordinator, because he was never one of those.

Recruiting

Life at the bottom is tough. Mississippi State is often left with a choice between guys who probably can't cut it in the SEC and guys who are questionable to qualify; as a result their classes come with significant uncertaint. Some LOIs are courtesy offers  intended as a sort of "draft and follow" as players go to JUCO and then arrive two years later. Current JUCO DB commit Donald Gray signed with MSU out of high school($) and both made good on it once Gray became eligible.

But an overview shows that concerns about oversigning and JUCOs are significantly overblown.

After Mullen's transitional class, he's taken two or three JUCOs per year; this is far from the Oregon State or Kansas State style of recruiting. MSU's classes are a bit bigger than average, but the maximum number of players recruited over any four-year span is 102, and with the JUCOs that's really 97 four-year players. Meanwhile MSU does not have the privilege of recruiting only guys who are definitely going to to make it. They have a natural attrition rate that does not involve axing guys on purpose.

As a result, the Bulldogs did not appear at all in Matt Hinton's 2013 edition of the oversigning index—Michigan did, with 87. MSU has in fact cut way down on signing class size under Mullen, partially because of SEC rules.

As far as the quality of those classes go, keep in mind that they're a bit overrated since any recruit gets you points and a higher percentage of Bulldog recruits flame out. That said, Mullen immediately and significantly improved MSU recruiting from a baseline dependent on even larger classes. MSU was 50th in Sylvester Croom's last class, 30th the year before with a whopping 35(!) recruits, and 40th in 2006. Mullen has bounced around a bit but has generally outperformed even without as much of a size bias in his favor.

He's done a great job of keeping Mississippi kids at home and has found many and varied diamonds in the rough.

Unfortunately it was impossible to find much about Mullen's reputation as a recruiter while at Florida since any relevant Google search is overwhelmed by articles about Florida hiring the guy to replace Muschamp.

CEO Stuff

Diaz was good, and then he was not good.

Mullen helped Oregon find Chip Kelly since they were both New Hampshire bros—good call. Mullen's out of the box hire of Manny Diaz looked pretty spectacular as Diaz obliterated the Denard Robinson show in 2011, whereupon Diaz was hired by Texas.

Texas's defense did not perform and Diaz was eventually fired midseason so Greg Robinson could come in; Robinson did improve them significantly. Whether Diaz was really a problem or just a convenient scapegoat as the Mack Brown era slid to its country-club conclusion is unknown.

Mullen's current staff is a mix of guys he's known for a long time and guys plucked for no other reason than they seem like good ideas. Former Utah QB Brian Johnson is the QB coach; the OL coach is a guy who came with him from Florida; the TE coach is a former Ursinis teammate of Mullen who spent the last decade in the Ivy League. On the other hand, his DC is a guy who he hired from FIU in 2011 and he's got a fewMississippidudes for recruiting purposes who he'd never crossed paths with before. Seems like a standard mix.

This is where a look at Mississippi State defenses goes:

[2008 again Croom.]

This is a bit of an oddity, with the rankings that take SOS into account in high praise after year one (minus a blip in 2012) and the raw numbers less positive. This is where MSU's brutal league schedule shows up. At the very least he's done a good job to make the Bulldog defense competitive, and if you believe the advanced stats his defensive coordinator is a keeper.

Potential Catches

There are a few:

How much of his success is Meyer? It's difficult to separate Mullen's talents from Meyer's, as Urbs hasn't exactly fallen apart at OSU without him. But it's worth noting that Mullen's successor, Steve Addazio, was a disaster as Florida's OC and was canned after two years. And then you've got the six years at Mississippi State. The guy is not a Meyer creation.

Can he recruit at Michigan? Michigan fans are understandably wary after Rich Rodriguez brought in one Demar Dorsey for every Denard Robinson he acquired. I don't think this is much of a concern. Florida acts a lot like a Big Ten team in recruiting and Mullen came up through ND, BGSU, and Utah. He is a Pennsylvania native.

Rodriguez had barely left West Virginia during his career—two years each at Tulane and Clemson under Tommy Bowden—by the time he got to M and was shocked by the differences. Mullen will not be.

NCAA violations? Two things get brought up about Mullen: the Cam Newton thing and the sudden resignation of an assistant because of booster shenanigans. Newton was in the news because his father solicited money from MSU; the Bulldogs refused to deal with the go-between and reported it to the SEC.

More recently, MSU lost two scholarships in 2013 and got two years of probation when assistant coach Angelo Mirando knew about booster interference in the recruitment of a DB and did not act. In that case the NCAA directly stated that no one other than Mirando had knowledge of the wrongdoing; Mirando was fired as soon as it was known.

Neither of these is anything that would prevent Mullen's hire.

Public relations maybe not so much. There were two eyebrow-cocking events this year. In the first, Mullen vociferously defended a player of his who twice stomped on LSU players and was suspended as a result. This is par for the course for just about everyone, but it wasn't a good look.

The second and more recent event was Mullen asking a QB who had been committed to Mississippi State for months was asked to grayshirt. This caused his high school coach to go off on twitter about it. It's an issue, but Mullen is prohibited from telling his side of the story by NCAA rules, and this is much better than signing the kid and then going "whoops, we have no spot for you." Michigan has done it in the past; Ohio State just had a TE flip to Kansas without any idea of who the head coach even is. Sometimes you make a call on a kid and it's wrong and it's in everyone's best interest to part ways.

It is not having a kid get through summer school and then saying "whoops," as Les Miles did. Anyone advocating Miles is advocating much worse behavior in this department. Meanwhile the numbers above show MSU is not making a habit of cutting guys loose willy-nilly.

Does his wife pass the "THAT WOMAN" test? IE, would my mother refer to his wife as THAT WOMAN or regard her as a pal and a confidant? If she threw a party and invited everyone she knew, would she see that the biggest gift was from my mom and the card read "thank you for being a friend?"

I have initiated this test after Rita Rodriguez, who by all reports is a sweetheart, symbolized unbridgeable cultural differences between Rodriguez and Michigan, i.e. my mom, through no fault of her own.

I report that Dan Mullen's wife passes the test.

Would He Take The Job?

Mullen has to know that success at Mississippi State is a fragile thing and he would be well served to strike while the iron's hot. MSU remains the poorest athletic department in his division and will never, ever be able to compete in recruiting with most of the SEC. This is a situation much different than any of the other attractive sitting head coaches. He'd go.

Overall Attractiveness

Unless you're telling me guys who were apparently unavailable for Florida (Gundy, Stoops, Patterson, Shaw, etc.) are on the board for Michigan, Mullen is the strongest non-Harbaugh candidate by a mile.

The only guy who is even debatable is Les Miles, who I am leery of because of his age, his skeezy recruiting practices, the evident split in the alumni base about his suitability, and the lingering fear that he would run out of his batty Mad Hatter luck the instant he stepped on campus—because of course that would happen to us.

I get arguments in favor of Miles even if I don't agree with them; there is no reasonable argument that any other feasible option is more attractive than Mullen.