[1] McGugin saw the baton twirling skills of W. W. Wharton in Tingley for a Sunday evening church service one day in 1896 and was intrigued.

"[3] After one victory he purchased a small brass cannon and fired it at regular fifteen-minute intervals, nodding politely to neighbors' Sabbath complaints and merrily blasting away.

McGugin, although good in every department of his position, has two qualities that are pre-eminent: namely, making interference and opening holes.

Vanderbilt made an effort to secure the services of McGugin's teammate at Michigan, Neil Snow, who was the University of Nashville (Peabody) football coach.

In 1904, McGugin wrote to Vanderbilt University asking for its head coaching position, and was hired at a salary of $850 per year plus board.

He had numerous intersectional triumphs: defeating the Carlisle Indians in 1906, and tying the Navy Midshipmen in 1907, the Yale Bulldogs in 1910, and the Michigan Wolverines in 1922.

One publication claims "The first scouting done in the South was in 1905, when Dan McGugin and Captain Innis Brown, of Vanderbilt went to Atlanta to see Sewanee play Georgia Tech.

"[15] In 1906 (the first year of the legal forward pass and onside kick) his team defeated Carlisle, had a third-team Walter Camp All-American in Owsley Manier (the South's first),[16] and were for some writers the entire All-Southern eleven.

[18] The next season Vanderbilt tied Navy and met rival Sewanee, in a battle of the unbeaten for the mythical crown of the South, and won using a trick double-pass play.

At McGugin's signal, the Commodores went into a freakish formation in which Stein Stone remained at center but all the other players shifted to his left.

Team captain Bill Neely, recalling the tie with Yale said: "The score tells the story a good deal better than I can.

All I want to say is that I never saw a football team fight any harder at every point than Vanderbilt fought today – line, ends, and backfield.

Before the Alabama game the following week, he shouted to reserve fullback Top Richardson to "hit hard on every play."

On a draft registration card completed in 1918, McGugin stated that he was the president of the Kensee Mining Company in Marion, Kentucky.

Vanderbilt tied Tennessee, in the rain, and Kentucky, and lost to Georgia Tech and Buck Flowers in the mud.

We defeated Georgia Tech, who tied Tulane, so we are champions...The newspapers, however, more or less generally supported the claim of Auburn..."[44] Cody again made Camp's third-team All-America.

"[37] "Instead of hammering detailed strategy into them,"[47] coach Dan McGugin had taken his team to the nearby grave of former Vanderbilt quarterback Curry in Marlin, Texas.

In a noted speech just before the teams took to the field, referring to this grave, McGugin tapped his fingers on the floor and began: You are about to be put to an ordeal which will show the stuff that's in you!

Later the same season, Vanderbilt faced Georgia in a contest for the Southern crown, tying the game late on an onside-kick-from-scrimmage 7–7.

[50]The quote is also reported, probably more accurately,[51][52] as "Out there lie the bones of your grandfathers;" referring to the nearby military cemetery, "And down on that field are the grandsons of the Yankee soldiers who put them there.

[16] Sportswriter Fred Russell dubbed the 1924 season "the most eventful in the history of Vanderbilt football", featuring wins over Georgia Tech and Minnesota,[55] as well as losses such as to Sewanee.

[56] End Hek Wakefield was consensus All-American, and beat Georgia Tech 3–0 with a 37-yard drop-kick field goal.

In 1927, Spears posted multiple passing records and halfback Jimmy Armistead led the nation in scoring.

[63] Center Pete Gracey told this story about McGugin in 1930: "In my first varsity year, the night before we played Georgia Tech, Coach McGugin casually walked up to me in the lobby of our hotel, put his arm around my shoulder and sorta whispered, "I was with some Atlanta newspapermen this afternoon and I told them you were the finest sophomore center I had ever coached.

"Considering that we lost such a valuable player as Pete Gracey so early in the game, I thought that Vanderbilt was very fortunate in getting out with a tie" said McGugin.

[65] Following the 1932 season, Vanderbilt joined the other SoCon schools south and west of the Appalachians in founding the Southeastern Conference.

[66] He selected: Bull Brown, Josh Cody, Lew Hardage, Ray Morrison, Bill Spears, and Hek Wakefield as the six best players he ever coached.

[71] McGugin died of heart failure in 1936, just two years after quitting the coaching profession and taking on the position of athletic director.

Sportswriter Fuzzy Woodruff wrote: The plain facts of the business are that McGugin stood out in the South like Gulliver among the native sons of Lilliput...

"[76][8]Fred Russell wrote of McGugin: For years he ruled supreme in Dixie, and his teams won many glorious intersectional victories.