Some of you need to separate coaching from marketing.
I have never thought much of Mullen as an on field coach, but he puts a (generally) entertaining product on the field, and has done more to unite the MSU fan base and sell tickets than any head coach that has come before him -- including Sherrill. And what has he really done to create unrealistic expectations in the fans, other than win games? I know he talks about being a champion, and I think its silly that refers to the UMiss game as a "championship", but that's just his attempt to create a mindset of winning. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I get it.
But the marketing gimmicks are not created by Mullen. Those are all on Stricklin and his gang, and for the most part I think they have worked pretty well. Granted, I at least hope that they run the uniform and gameday ideas past Mullen first just to see if he objects, but why would he even care about all the Snowbowl hype they did? I thought memorializing a bowl game from 12 years ago was dumb, but I serioulsy doubt it had any effect at all on the performance of the team. I just don't see how the players could have even cared about that stuff.
Let the marketing guys do their marketing unless it somehow interferes with the team. These "gimmicks" are not designed to try to win games, they are strictly for the fans.
So the team built a 7-0 record playing soft competition. Mullen didn't make out the schedule, and he certainly did not cause Auburn, Tennesee and even Kentucky to field their worst teams in decades. He also wasn't the one coming on message boards and claiming that they were playing a "vanilla" defense that would be much more stout against SEC competition (and any of you who believed that garbage are idiots). He won the games, and now his team has been exposed for 2 games as not nearly as good as some people thought.
Mullen has a long way to go, and perhaps he is just now coming to grips with the massive inertia that is MSU sports. The team played worse in these last two games than I expected, and surely Mullen deserves a lot of the blame for that, but I just never thought our defense was capable of winning either game anyway.