Apparently, Mark Mangino has made it successfully to tonight’s game at Texas as the football coach at Kansas.
A Kansas sports-information official confirmed that Mangino will be on the sideline. For Mangino, the news represents a small victory. He’s experienced very few lately.
Kansas has lost five consecutive games after starting 5-0. Then a series of reports this week painted Mangino as an angry, abusive excuse for an authority figure.
Think a combination of the late Woody Hayes and a territorial grizzly.
Mangino answered his critics on radio Thursday.
“I think there are people embarrassing this program just for their 15 minutes of fame,” he said.
When reports first surfaced early in the week about an athletic department investigation into the Kansas coach, the charge seemed underwhelming.
Athletic director Lew Perkins met with the football team Monday night because of concerns about Mangino’s alleged treatment of players. By Tuesday, word had leaked that Mangino had done the finger-in-the-chest routine to linebacker Arist Wright.
In a sport where face masks are fair game as an attention-getter and where YouTube-worthy rants are common, the original report didn’t seem particularly damning.
To quote another embattled coach, Colorado’s Dan Hawkins, from 2007: “It’s Div. I football. It’s the Big 12. It ain’t intramurals.”
Just two seasons ago, Mangino was viewed as a football alchemist, turning a leaden program at a basketball school into BCS gold.
People wrote about his humble beginnings, moonlighting as an ambulance driver on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He was the unglamorous underdog, a super-sized example of substance and persistence.
Then, Mangino was just a tough guy pushing all the right buttons.
Few outside the program knew the apparent ill will he had built in eight seasons. This week’s news became chum in the water.
Through numerous media reports since Monday, we learned that Mangino had never met a player that he couldn’t tear down.
Former Kansas receiver Raymond Brown explained to ESPN that he had volunteered a personal anecdote about his brother being wounded in the arm in St. Louis.
Later, after dropping a pass, Brown said he was told by Mangino: “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to send you back to St. Louis so you can get shot with your homies.”
Apparently, Mangino’s other targets included alcoholic fathers and deceased friends.
Additional run-ins surfaced, from a student employee who had given him a parking ticket to high school referees.
The information quickly prompted a few questions about Mangino: Bad temper? Definitely.
Bad coach? Nope.
Bad guy? Depends if he’s in your face.
Reports of a strained relationship with Perkins may not help either.
At this point, the charges may be reaching critical mass. How much will the reports of abuse and bullying hurt recruiting in Texas, where Kansas has been especially successful?
Mangino overcame major obstacles to become a Div. I head coach.
He faces bigger hurdles to remain one.
