The gang of alumni from Manchester, New Hampshire’s Trinity High School won’t have to travel quite so far to see their most famous pal.
Dan Mullen, who has been the head coach at Mississippi State since 2009, has annually hosted his teammates from Trinity’s 1988 state championship at a home game in Starkville.
But there will be no flights necessary this week as Mullen will bring the Bulldogs to the Northeast for the first time since 1986. A caravan of friends and family will pour onto the highway until they reach Gillette Stadium, where they will watch Mississippi State face UMass on Saturday.
“It’s kind of cool. I’ll have a lot of friends and family that’ll be able to come to the game. It’ll be a chance to play in Foxborough and in an NFL Stadium. For our players that’s a unique opportunity,” Mullen said in an August phone interview. “I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. My parents still live in New Hampshire. A lot of my friends live in southern New Hampshire and southern Vermont.”
Mullen still gets back regularly during the offseason.
Usually he heads home for a Red Sox game and chicken fingers with duck sauce at the Back Room in Manchester.
“My son is a big Papi fan,” he said.
This year was a little different with two more noteworthy visits.
He visited in June and was inducted into the Trinity High School Hall of Fame before giving the graduation address.
Before that, despite never having run a road race of any distance, he ran the Boston Marathon in April.
“It was something that was on my bucket list of things to do in life. It was something to accomplish,” said Mullen, who crossed the finish line in 4 hours, 28 minutes, 35 seconds. “Football has team goals you accomplish. This was an opportunity to have an individual accomplishment. It was pretty new and unique for me to get to go and do that. I really enjoyed it. It’s something I’ll have with me forever.”
The 44 year old wasn’t sure if he’d do it again.
“You never know what could come next for me. There’s more things out there I’d love to do,” he said. “Hopefully I get the opportunity to keep doing those things. That was something special. Maybe when I turn 50 I’ll try to do it again.”
He was impressed with how many Mississippi State fans he encountered along the way.
“As I was running there were Mississippi State fans out there yelling and cheering on the side of the road,” Mullen said. “I thought that was pretty cool.”
He’s expecting quite a few Bulldog faithful to be in Foxborough. In addition to the fans that regularly travel and those who want to see the home of the Patriots, for many fans and alumni living in the Northeast, Gillette is the closest game to them.
“We travel well. The fans are so passionate,” Mullen said. “We’ll have a pretty good turnout in Foxborough.”
Mullen said he was rooting for UMass and other New England schools to embrace college football.
“Having grown up in New England, one of the things that is missing is the passion for college athletics. College football and the passion in the South for college football is unbelievable,” Mullen said. “Every single Saturday in the South is like a Red Sox-Yankees playoff game. It’s an event. It’s not just a game. It’s an event. It would be something great for people in New England to get to experience that type of event and how special it is. That’s what makes it so fantastic for us.”
So fantastic that his high school buddies are still making a trip to Starkville even though they’ll see him Saturday.
“They’re not missing the trip down here. That’s been a tradition now going on for years,” Mullen said. “They say that there’s nothing like it.”
Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage