The summer before Kansas football would embark on its most successful season in history, the team’s coach would be accused of verbally berating a KU student who had issued him the latest of nearly two dozen tickets for illegally parking in a loading zone near his office.
At that time, Kansas Athletics Inc. encouraged KU Parking & Transit to take whatever action it normally would take in such a situation, then turned its attention to discussing the issue with coach Mark Mangino.
Mangino hasn’t had a KU parking ticket since.
“We addressed it, and it’s over,” said Jim Marchiony, a spokesman for Kansas Athletics Inc., on Tuesday.
The acknowledgment comes as Mangino faces scrutiny from within and around his own team. Athletic Director Lew Perkins issued a statement early Tuesday, saying that an “internal review” was under way regarding a “personnel issue.” Perkins also said that he had conducted a meeting Monday night with football players, a meeting that did not include Mangino.
Mangino, during his regular weekly media conference Tuesday, declined to discuss specifics regarding Perkins’ meeting with players, but did emphasize that he continued to hold the students’ attention.
“I haven’t lost the team one bit,” Mangino said. “I may have lost some people around here, but it’s not players. Take that for what it’s worth. You decipher it.”
Attempts to contact Mangino on Tuesday evening to discuss the 2007 parking incident were unsuccessful.
Documented evidence
The Journal-World received documentation regarding the incident through an open records request filed earlier this year. The request yielded information about Mangino’s parking tickets, and other documentation regarding the incident with a Parking and Transit employee.
Marchiony acknowledged the existence of the information, but declined to discuss their contents in detail.
“The documents speak for themselves,” he said.
As outlined in the documents provided by Kansas University, the incident occurred in June 2007, when Mangino received a ticket from KU Parking and Transit for parking his vehicle in the loading zone south of Parrott Athletic Center — the 23rd time he had been ticketed for parking in the space.
Donna Hultine, director of KU Parking and Transit, reported that the particular ticket had spurred Mangino to track down the student employee who had written the ticket and launch a 10-minute, expletive-filled “tirade” so loud that it drew several employees out of nearby Allen Fieldhouse to watch.
“He screamed, yelled and cussed for a while and then got out of his car and screamed, yelled and cussed 6 inches from the student’s face,” Hultine said, in an e-mail to her boss at Strong Hall, Vice Provost Jim Long.
Contacted Tuesday, Hultine said she was pleased with the athletic department’s quick response to her complaints. Indeed, she said, Mangino hasn’t been ticketed since the incident and even has gone out of his way this season to be cordial to Parking and Transit employees when he sees them.
“It tells me that he’s willing to play by the rules and if he’s at least changed his behavior towards us, that’s great,” she said.
But two years ago, Hultine said, she was concerned for the very safety of her employees.
“I didn’t want to put any of my folks in his path,” Hultine said Tuesday. “Based on that incident, I knew what he was capable of. I had to stop it. I needed it to be addressed.
“They (athletics) took it very seriously and addressed it pretty quickly.”
Mangino now has a parking space at his program’s own building, the Anderson Family Football Complex at Kivisto Field, which opened in July 2008. Mangino’s space — just outside the chain-link fence below the Memorial Stadium scoreboard — is available only to him, as holder of the lone permit issued for the reserved space.
Parking history
In 2004, Mangino had received a ticket for parking in a restricted area of a lot described as south of the fieldhouse, where a “No parking next to loading dock” sign had been posted. Administrators agreed to void the ticket, and a similar ticket was voided in March 2005.
Several subsequent tickets were paid, at $20 apiece, before one in May 2006 — involving a loading zone north of the fieldhouse — was voided at the request of Brad Nachtigal, an assistant athletics director. Mangino then received another ticket for the same spot a week later.