I’ve told this anecdote from time to time, and it’s never received much traction because … well, of course it didn’t.

When Dana Holgorsen arrived in December 2010 and Dave Johnson and Jeff Mullen_ were dismissed, Mullen was seen as damaged goods. His first spell away from Jim Grobe and his first run as an offensive coordinator just didn’t work out well at all. That’s bad news for a guy who’d been in the game as long as he had, especially at a time when the coaching ranks were being populate by young, innovative and ambitious minds.

Mullen was out of work for a few months, but in March 2011 he was hired as the offensive coordinator in Charlotte, which didn’t have a football program. The school would recruit, coach and build toward the inaugural 2013 season. At different points in the 2011 and 2012 offseasons, coaches or friends I know at different programs would tell me Mullen had been brought to a campus or a clinic or whatever just to share what he knew about offense.

Invariably, the audience treasured it.

That wasn’t a joke, and it was hard for people around here to take it seriously — and that Mullen visited Marshall didn’t change many of those minds, either.

But look back now. Marshall was a bad offensive football team in 2011. A year later, the Thundering Herd offense was faster, more diverse and wildly effective. It wasn’t all Mullen, but it wasn’t all Rakeem Cato-to-Tommy Shuler, either.

Anyhow, Bruce Tall is back coaching the defensive line at WVU. Mullen was Charlotte coach Brad Lambert’s first hire. Tall was the second. The erstwhile Mountaineers assistants spent a lot of time together crafting a program and then coaching with and against one another. Tall — it is here where I remind you he coached at Harvard! — can’t say enough about Mullen.

“He is very intelligent,” Tall told me. “A lot of people don’t realize it. When the Panthers drafted Cam Newton, the first guy they called was Jeff, and they brought him in and he lectured their offensive coordinator for a week to prepare him to run what he does. He does a great job down there. The offense was far, far ahead because of what he was doing. He does a great job understanding how to attack people. He’s just really good at it.”

Newton, you’ll recall, was the offensive rookie of the year in 2012. The offensive coordinator? Rob Chudzinski, who was named the Browns head coach in 2013. Newton’s first QB coach? Mike Shula, who is now the offensive coordinator. Mullen is more Midas than Medusa these days, and his first two Charlotte offenses were dynamite.