Scott Stricklin woke up Sunday morning following the Florida Gators' overtime loss to Missouri and his gut told him that the football program needed a new direction.
Stricklin met with Dan Mullen before noon on Sunday to inform the head coach that he would be relieved of his position.
"I'll be honest, probably this morning is when I made that decision that we were ready to go a different direction," Stricklin said. "So I don't know that it's — I can't say it was 70% on this day, and then 80% on the other day, it was just Dan was our coach and I was fully supportive of him, but once you get that feeling it's time to do something different you need to go ahead and do it. I woke up this morning with that feeling, so we moved ahead."
Mullen was extended an offer to coach one more game with the team but after mulling it over decided that he, because of the news, would be more of a distraction to the team and declined the offer.
"(I) Gave him the opportunity to coach the game Saturday against FSU, and after some discussion and he actually took some time to think about it he made the decision that he thought he would be a bit of a distraction if he was around this week after this news came out. And so he made the decision to step away and not coach the FSU game," Stricklin said.
Florida had been trending down. The Gators have lost nine of their last 11 games against Power 5 competition. Florida didn't win a road SEC contest in 2021 and will finish ranked 13th in the SEC this season.
Stricklin was asked a couple of times how the program had gotten to the point where they were firing a head coach in the middle of a season and offered up that they are constantly evaluating. However, Florida's loss — specifically the way they lost — in Columbia, South Carolina was eye-opening. The next half of football watched FCS Samford dominate the team before a second-half comeback gave Florida a win. Then Saturday's loss to the Missouri Tigers was the final straw.
Dan Mullen was 34-15 (21-13 SEC) in four seasons as the head coach of Florida.
