Bill Snead/Journal-World PhotoOrlando, Fla. ? Kansas University football coach Mark Mangino gave his players credit for doing what appeared to be an impossible task — reaching a bowl game in just the second year of a rebuilding project — during Friday’s Tangerine Bowl kickoff luncheon.
“It’s those young men over there,” said Mangino, whose team will play North Carolina State at 4:30 p.m. CST Monday on ESPN (Sunflower Broadband Channel 48). “They’re the reason we’re in a bowl game. It’s not me; it’s them. They believed they could do what others thought they could not do.”
Nice speech, coach. Too bad your players weren’t buying it.
“From the first day, he told us they were going to turn this program around,” said senior offensive tackle Adrian Jones, who — along with fellow co-captains Bill Whittemore and Banks Floodman — said the credit belonged to their coach. “From a mental aspect, he helped us actually believe in ourselves. He helped us get more focused and more disciplined to attain a goal we all had. From the beginning, he told us we were going to get better.”
It didn’t happen overnight. The Jayhawks struggled through a 2-10 season in 2002.
Bill Snead/Journal-World Photo“It wasn’t fun,” said Mangino, who had helped build winning programs as an assistant at Kansas State and Oklahoma. “We hated it. I hated every minute of it. I’m just not used to that. Our players realized the only way we were going to be a decent football team is we just have to keep at it. We set the bar high. Most of the kids here have met those standards. Now in our second year they’re experiencing a bowl game. The highlight of our season was seeing their faces after we became bowl eligible.”
Mangino said his coaching staff had to “change the way other people thought about us and the way we thought about ourselves.”
That was an arduous task after seven consecutive losing seasons.
“It’s a tough situation for a coach to come into,” said Whittemore, the quarterback who played a leading role in the program’s improvement. “The team’s supposed to be together. He has to come in and break it all down and start over. A lot of guys don’t enjoy coaches like that who come in and fight to get the program where he wants it. For the guys that believed in him, stuck around him and backed him up on his decisions, it’s paying off for us.”
Many players didn’t stick around that long. Mangino said he never ran a player off, but clearly some couldn’t fit into his system.
Many of them left. And that turned out to be a good thing.
“Some of them weren’t willing to put in the time and hours that the majority of the players — now all of the players — were willing to put in,” said Floodman, a third-year sophomore linebacker. “Everyone’s so much better friends now. The chemistry is a huge part of the success. When your team chemistry is improving, you’re going to have people who have more in common and more common goals.”
Whittemore said the team’s attitude has changed completely since he arrived in the winter of 2001.
“It was definitely down,” he said. “Nobody wanted to be around it. Practices weren’t intense. Everybody was just happy with what was going on. There were a few players who were fighting and clawing, but not like it is now. There was a big jump in spring last year and summer this year.”
That’s partly due to the fact that Mangino brought in more than a dozen junior-college recruits during the offseason. And while some of those prospects didn’t pan out, they did light a fire under returning players.
“They brought in guys they were expecting to take their positions,” Whittemore said, “so everybody worked hard individually.”
No one wanted a repeat of 2002.
Jones said the hard work mandated by the coaching staff also pulled the team together.
“Since he’s been here, we’ve become closer as a family,” Jones said. “The people on our team, I love them like brothers. I’d do anything for them. When you work hard and you see somebody else working hard, it helps you motivate each other.”
That team unity could pay future dividends. Kansas signed five junior-college players this week and has oral commitments from nine high-school players.
“Lots of recruits comment on how close the team is,” Floodman said. “That makes players want to come in and be a part of that.”
Kansas will lose seven senior starters, including Whittemore and Jones, but Whittemore was confident the Jayhawks’ bowl trip was no one-year wonder.
“I really believe this program is on its way,” said Whittemore, who was asked if Mangino could replicate the job he helped Bill Snyder do at Kansas State. “I believe it’ll be there, no doubt, in two years with the guys coach Mangino is bringing in. He’s a great recruiter.”
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