ESPN College Football

Posted by ESPN.com's Chris Low

When last season began, Dan Mullen and Gene Chizik were two guys who probably weren’t on many head coaching radars in the SEC.

And certainly not where they both landed.

	Shelby Daniel/Icon SMI
	Dan Mullen had never been a head coach before taking over at Mississippi State.

After all, Sylvester Croom had just earned SEC coach of the year honors at Mississippi State, and Tommy Tuberville was thought to be one of the more secure coaches in the league at Auburn with his gaudy record against nationally ranked foes and six straight wins over Alabama.

Blink in this league, though, and we all know what happens, which gets us back to the current head coaches at Auburn and Mississippi State.

Chizik had gone 3-9 in his first season at Iowa State and was anything but a household name among hot head coaching candidates nationally.

Mullen, only 36 at the time, was tutoring a guy by the name of Tim Tebow and had never been a head coach. The frontrunner to get a head job off that Florida staff was defensive coordinator Charlie Strong. Or so it seemed.

“I don’t think any of us know when that phone might ring,” Mullen said during the preseason. “My belief has always been that you coach as hard as you can in the job that you’re in, and everything else sort of has a way of working itself out if it’s meant to be.”

Chizik’s hiring was a stunner to a lot of people because of his 5-19 record at Iowa State. But had he stayed at Texas as defensive coordinator and Auburn hired him away from the Longhorns, his arrival into the SEC wouldn’t have been greeted with near the skepticism.

	AP Photo/Dave Martin
	Gene Chizik compiled a 5-19 record as head coach at Iowa State.

“You feel like you’re ready to be a head coach and you only get so many opportunities,” Chizik said during the preseason. “What if my opportunity didn’t come until four or five years from now? There’s no doubt in my mind that Auburn hired a better coach after I spent the last two years at Iowa State trying to rebuild that program than if they had hired the defensive coordinator at Texas.”

As fate would have it, Chizik and Mullen meet on Saturday in their SEC head coaching debuts.

The fun and games from the opening weekend are over. Auburn pulled away from Louisiana Tech for an easy win, and Mississippi State blasted Jackson State.

Now it’s the real thing, and Chizik and Mullen are both well-versed in what it takes to win in this league.

Chizik was the defensive coordinator on Auburn’s 2004 team that went 13-0 and won the Tigers’ last SEC championship. Mullen was a part of two national championships at Florida.

Neither has the kind of firepower they had during their first tour through the SEC.

“We learned so much about our football team [in the 37-13 win over Louisiana Tech], but we’ve got so much room for improvement,” Chizik said.

Maybe so, but one of the new guys in the SEC is going to be 2-0 come Saturday night.