Dan Mullen is the Dave Ramsey of College Football

Dan Mullen has taken a Dave Ramsey style approach to building the MSU football program.

Dave Ramsey has made a name for himself as one of the brightest personal finance gurus in the country. His philosophy on credit, personal spending, debt, and budgeting has helped straighten out the finances of millions of people. Ramsey’s teachings are so well thought of, Mississippi State is making all athletes who receive a new cost of attendance scholarship go through some of Dave Ramsey’s course work.

I don’t want to over simplify the philosophy and strategies Dave Ramsey employs, but if you were to try summarize his teachings into one or two sentences, it would probably sound something like this. Stick to a very strict budget and avoid debt at all costs.

I know there is a lot more to it than just that, but it’s at least a good starting point. Dave Ramsey will also tell you his methods are not a get rich quick scheme. His plan is to allow participants to accumulate personal wealth over a number of years. I heard him once say that his methods aren’t a microwave plan to accumulating wealth, they’re a slow cooker plan.

So what does this have to do with Mississippi State? It’s simple. 2014 and 2015 proved that Dan Mullen is the Dave Ramsey of college football.

Whether or not it’s true or based on stereotypical attitudes is up for debate, but there is a belief Dan Mullen has more obstacles to overcome to recruit players to Mississippi State. Trying to use a microwave plan was probably not a sound strategy to rebuild the Bulldogs for this reason. Bringing in recruits who fit exactly what Mullen wanted to implement at Mississippi State regardless of stars was the method he chose. Mullen has taken a number of players most SEC coaches wouldn’t touch, and it’s worked for him.

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2014 and 2015 were the first seasons Dan Mullen had rosters that were recruited solely by him and his coaching staff. I don’t want to spend a ton of time rehashing all the players SEC coaches passed up, but there are lots of them. Where other coaches saw simple grains of sand, Mullen saw pearls if he could just get those grains of sand in the right oysters.

And if you know anything about how pearls are made, you know it takes years for that grain of sand to develop into a pearl. Mullen knew this too when he recruited the players he did. Those players weren’t overlooked by other coaches because they were prime athletic specimens. They were overlooked because it was going to take time to develop them into a good football player. In the high stakes, ultra competitive SEC, most coaches in the SEC don’t have the luxury of time.

But Mississippi State and our fans are different. History has not been kind to the Bulldogs. We’ve endured far more losing than we have winning, so patience is not such a rare commodity among the fans of our school. Much was made in 2014 about it taking six years for Mullen to field a team that had a chance to compete for an SEC West title. But If you could have told any Mississippi State fan they’ll go to four bowls the first five years of the Dan Mullen era, and in year six, they’ll play Alabama for what was a de facto SEC West title game, every single one of us would have taken it.

Which brings us back to Dave Ramsey and Dan Mullen. Mullen slowly crafted this program to do exactly what they did in 2014. He had a roster full of juniors and seniors who had been sitting in oysters and turning into pearls for four years. It was time to reap the benefits of all that patience. Just like Ramsey’s methods take time and patience, Dan Mullen never panicked and was rewarded for staying the course.

Many believe all the best pearls Dan Mullen had in 2014 and 2015 are gone, and now the coach has nothing but grains of sand once again. But Mullen believes he has a brand new set of pearls to show the world. Whether 2016 is a stepping stone year towards 2017 or it’s this fall that Mullen sees a potential for high marks we will soon find out.

Mullen is ready to show the college football world a new way to “reload” as a college football team. The blue bloods of college football often never experience too many setbacks because they replace highly recruited players with highly recruited players. Dan Mullen is going to show the world you can reload highly developed players with more highly developed players. It’s not an easy plan. It takes time and patience that most people simply don’t have.

But it’s the kind of mentally that must make Dave Ramsey smile.

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