Florida and its athletic director reached into their pasts to find a new coach and two mores schools fired coaches even though their teams are heading to bowl games.

Mississippi stayed in-house to fill its coaching vacancy. And, in the strangest part of a wild day of hirings and firings, Tennessee’s search hit a bizarre snag.

The action began Sunday morning with Arizona State dismissing Todd Graham after six seasons and ended with Ole Miss promoting interim coach Matt Luke at night. In between, as reports popped up that Florida and Tennessee were getting close to making hires, Texas A&M announced it was letting go of Kevin Sumlin.

Soon after the Aggies acted Florida wrapped up its search by hiring Dan Mullen away from Mississippi State. Mullen was the Gators’ offensive coordinator under Urban Meyer before taking over in Starkville nine years ago. There he became one of the most successful coaches in the history of the program and worked with current Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin, who was an AD at Mississippi State.

Now they will try to raise the Gators back to the championship level the program has been trying to get back to since winning national titles in 2006 and ‘08.

“I have such great memories of the championships we won during our time here and have a love for Florida,” Mullen said. “We are happy to be coming back to such a supportive administration, staff, student body and fan base.”

Florida’s move on Mullen had to come as good news to Nebraska fans hoping their school will be able to hire UCF coach Scott Frost, a former Cornhuskers quarterback whose teams is undefeated.

Both Texas A&M and Arizona State fired coaches with winning records over six years. Sumlin was 51-26 with the Aggies and Graham went 46-31 with the Sun Devils. Both teams were 7-5 this year.

“Our expectations at A&M are very high,” Aggies AD Scot Woodward said. “We believe that we should compete for SEC championships on an annual basis and, at times, national championships.”

Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson made a similar statement: “At the end of the day we’re still average, middle of the pack and going to a low bowl game. Frankly, that’s not what we aspire to be. I don’t think anyone on staff was satisfied with that.”

There was already speculation that Sumlin would be a candidate at Arizona State.

Luke, the former Ole Miss offensive lineman and assistant coach, was named interim when Hugh Freeze was fired during the summer. With the Rebels facing NCAA sanctions and ineligible for postseason because of a self-imposed ban, Luke guided Ole Miss to a 6-6 finish. On Sunday night, the Ole Miss AD Ross Bjork decided to look no further and gave Luke his dream job.

All of that was perfectly normal compared to what happened with Tennessee. Reports surfaced that the Volunteers were interested in former Rutgers coach and current Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano. Fans, Vols supporters and Tennessee politicians began protesting because of Schiano’s connection to Penn State during Jerry Sandusky’s time as defensive coordinator.

Sandusky is serving 30 to 60 years in prison for his conviction on 45 counts of sexual abuse. Court documents released last year of a deposition in a case related to the Sandusky scandal suggested Schiano might have been aware of Sandusky’s sexual abuse against children, though Schiano says he had no knowledge of what was happening at the time.

A deal that was close to being done between Schiano and Tennessee ended up falling apart.