What fuels first-year UNLV football coach Dan Mullen?

“I didn’t say ‘yes’ at first,” Megan Mullen remembered.

So it took another from Dan Mullen, another request to take the sports anchor from an NBC affiliate in Toledo, Ohio, on a date.

It was during the 2001-02 football season, and Mullen was the quarterbacks coach at Bowling Green. He had seen Megan West, 25 at the time, on TV and was smitten.

Her director then read aloud a second email to the newsroom — and said Megan should accept the invitation. She did.

And now look at them.

They recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary and landed in Las Vegas with their two children when Dan accepted the head coaching job at UNLV in December.

He replaced Barry Odom, who departed for Purdue after two of the most successful seasons in UNLV history.

It’s a tough act to follow, but Mullen certainly has the résumé and chops to do so.

“Dan is never going to do anything he can’t do 100 percent,” Megan said. “He’s too competitive for that.”

He spent more than 15 years in the Southeastern Conference with head coaching stops at Mississippi State and Florida, spent all that time in the nation’s best conference sharpening his skills.

But he didn’t crave it any longer when his tenure ended in Gainesville, Florida, with his dismissal in November 2021. He didn’t chase other jobs. He needed a break from the sidelines.

“I wanted to walk away, but that’s not how I wanted my coaching career to end,” the 53-year-old Mullen said. “That wasn’t the last chapter of the book for me. But it was going to be a lot about timing and situation for me to get back into it.”

UNLV is that place.

And the timing couldn’t be better.

ESPN days

First, about the break: Mullen spent three years as an ESPN analyst before taking the UNLV job. He cherished the time and opportunity to see football from a different angle.

From a different space than one calling the shots.

“You can’t watch a game without Dan doing commentary or play-by-play anyways,” said Megan, a former lead female broadcaster for The Golf Channel. “So the TV part of things made sense. He got a behind-the-scenes look at things with my time on The Golf Channel. I’d be lying if I didn’t say (schools) weren’t still calling about jobs every year, but he didn’t want them. He wanted UNLV when the time came. He’s very methodical about things.”

Here’s how Mullen saw it: When he was a commentator, his was a totally independent look at the game. The thoughts he had and the comments he made came from a love for college football. They were, in his mind, the best for all involved.

He felt fortunate to be at ESPN and had a wonderful time there, but it wasn’t like being in a locker room daily. Wasn’t like being on the field with his players. So he waited to begin writing that next chapter to the coaching book.

To be comfortable with the situation. To come back on his own terms.

Now his comments are all about UNLV and what’s best for his program and the Mountain West. That his total focus is on the university and enhancing the brand of the conference and the Rebels.

“We want to put ourselves in position to keep ourselves in a window where we as a conference are getting bids to the College Football Playoff and competing on a national stage,” Mullen said. “To continue growing the conference and what’s best for UNLV.”

Home in Las Vegas

Dan and Megan took their first trip to Las Vegas during the former’s time coaching at Utah in the 2003-04 season.

They drove the six hours from Salt Lake City to attend a wedding, never realizing that Southern Nevada eventually would play such a huge role in their lives.

But it does now.

Some background: Mullen was an assistant coach at Florida under Urban Meyer when a colleague of Megan’s at The Golf Channel, now ESPN anchor Scott Van Pelt, called about tickets to the Gators-Florida State game for a few guys from Las Vegas.

Think of requesting front-row seats to Taylor Swift just days before her concert.

But the football tickets were landed — right after Megan was assured the Las Vegas visitors wouldn’t be wearing any Florida State gear — and a connection was made.

John Saccenti, executive director of the Las Vegas Bowl, was one of those visitors. His friendship with the family over the years — lots of football games where Dan was coaching, lots of golf — grew into a familial relationship.

Saccenti was instrumental in Mullen becoming interested in and landing the UNLV job.

“What you’re going to see is an incredible family,” Saccenti said. “There’s a reason all the Mississippi State players called Megan ‘Mama Mullen.’ She cares about every single player and is really entrenched in the program. She’ll be a great fit for this program.

“I also don’t think there’s a place that suits Dan better if you think about his energy and ability to forge relationships and getting along with people. He’s back to developing coaches and developing players and having fun doing it. He knows this town will get behind them 100 percent.

“He digs the energy and vibe and the people. Everything about Las Vegas.”

Mullen has a favorite golf club (Southern Highlands). He has his favorite restaurants (depends on the type of food). He has — by far — his favorite show (Kenny Chesney at the Sphere).

Mullen was in Las Vegas for the induction of former Utah quarterback Alex Smith into the College Football Hall of Fame in December when talk heated up about the UNLV job.

Odom set a terrific foundation.

The feeling of many is that Mullen will take the program to another level.

“The stars just aligned,” Megan said. “He would go out here the last three years and call me when I’m home with the kids and say, ‘Megan, I could live out here. I get up, work out, the sky is sunny, I get a smoothie, play golf, sit by a fire pit overlooking the Strip. I’ve never lived anywhere where I had friends.’

“That’s all pretty cool. I think that’s why it made it a slam dunk for him to take this job. And he knows he’s going to win.”

The couple have an idea: To celebrate their wedding anniversary, they would renew their vows at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, a ceremony that would include their children — son Canon, a standout high school basketball player, and daughter Bree, a competitive cheerleader and soccer player.

“We could have some fun with it,” Mullen said. “Hopefully, we don’t get a guy shot at in the parking lot like in ‘The Hangover.’ It would be cool to have Elvis there. We’d be into the fun part of it.”

Yes. It seems they have definitely taken to the place.

The changing times

College football is different now. The transfer portal. Name, image and likeness dollars.

During his time away, Mullen learned about all of it, talked with fellow coaches about the ever-changing landscape of the game. But it’s another thing to experience it.

The portal annually has thousands of names jumping into it, all searching for opportunity elsewhere. It used to be that a roster might have a 20 percent turnover rate with players graduating or perhaps going to the NFL.

Now, you can double that annually.

UNLV has 26 Power Four transfers this season.

“A whole new team in a given year,” Mullen said. “That’s a major change, more so than where your NIL money is coming from. But we’ll adapt to the (transfer portal) fairly easily. The program is the program. That’s not going to change.”

NIL money distributed to athletes is raised by a collective of boosters and supporters of the program. But schools can’t make everybody happy, and another team is apt to offer more to specific players.

Mullen has an answer for that.

“We look at guys and say, ‘Here’s what we can do for you,’ ” he said. “If that doesn’t work, OK. That was the hard part talking to coaches the last couple years. It would have been tough for me. How are you not just bought into the program? How can you not bleed your school colors?

“I think it’s just coming to grips with this whole new world. It’s my job to get everyone on our roster to believe and buy into the team and the UNLV family. If some guys think they have a better opportunity elsewhere, I understand and wish them the best. But it’s hard for old-school coaches to grasp that.”

He wants more than anything else to create a big-time atmosphere, beginning with games at Allegiant Stadium. The Las Vegas Bowl has staged such games over the years, and the Kickoff Classic between USC and LSU did so again last season.

But in Mullen’s mind, his team’s home games also should resemble such a raucous setting. He wants the city supporting his program and can’t think of why it wouldn’t. And that not only means tens of thousands in the seats but also financial gains.

“I don’t know if there is a school out there that has the entertainment and sports capital of the world behind it,” he said. “There should be legitimate NIL opportunities for our players. It’s all here for them. From a business perspective, we’re the city’s team. I don’t know if the city of Las Vegas has ever really seen big-time college football on a consistent basis. It can happen here.”

A hot seat?

Odom went 19-8 in two seasons and led the Rebels to consecutive bowl games for the first time in school history.

He breathed life into a program that had been gasping for air for decades. He made a winner out of a perennial loser.

He awoke an indifferent city to the fact that it has a college football program capable of success.

So now it falls to Mullen.

Is there such a thing as pressure in one’s first season as coach? Is it even possible to be sitting on a warm seat, much less a hot one?

“I’ll say this: As a coach, no one puts more pressure on yourself than the individual,” Mullen said. “You’ll put yourself on the hottest of hot seats every single day because of your standards and expectations of where you want the program.”

It’s different this time. In his previous stops as a head coach, Mullen inherited programs that needed turning around.

That’s not the case at UNLV.

So in his first meeting with players, he asked them what went well the past two seasons and how they could build off that. To sort of bring him up to speed.

“Some places you go and ask players how many of them want to win,” Mullen said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, we want to win, Coach.’ Well, you won two games last year, so you didn’t want it that bad. You were wishing you would win but didn’t really want it.

“But this team wanted to win and had a winning program, so I’ve embraced that with the players. I have my way of doing things, so we’ll run the program my way, but we’re going to be smart enough to listen to the guys who were here and have them tell us what they thought helped us win. That’s really important.”

He said he’s always learning, that you’re either getting better or worse daily. Said he has made plenty of mistakes throughout the years and it’s on him to guide his players so they don’t repeat them.

It was in late July when Mullen joked he was still undefeated at UNLV, and that is why he was so well-liked in Las Vegas.

“The key is always trying to grow and develop every day,” he said. “From the first day I sat in a (head coaching) seat, I’ve learned things.”

Blow the whistle

Dan Mullen will tell you this:

You want to see a good team?

Walk into a meeting. If there is no one talking and players are just sitting there waiting for him to begin, that’s not the sign of one. But if he walks in and needs his whistle to get everyone’s attention, that is.

Seems he has used his whistle more times than not at UNLV.

“I have a really good feeling about this team,” Mullen said. “I like our mindset. I like our attitude. We don’t have any issues within the program. Our guys love to be on the field and around each other. You love guys who show up and love ball.

“How will that translate? We’re going to have a lot of fun.

“We’re going to put a good product on the field.”

He’s loving Las Vegas and coaching this team.

How will that translate? Only time will tell.