Former Kansas football coach Mark Mangino had a simple message when he addressed the current Jayhawks after their team meetings Friday evening: “Thank you.”
“Thank you for restoring some pride in this program,” Mangino said.
Mangino, who took the helm of the KU program for eight years and oversaw four bowl appearances and three wins — including the seminal 2007 Orange Bowl victory over Virginia Tech — was back in Lawrence over the weekend to witness the Ring of Honor induction of his former linebacker Nick Reid.
He said he was proud, after getting a decade of phone calls from former players decrying the “embarrassing” state of the program and having to reassure them it would improve, to see current Jayhawks building on the work his staff and student-athletes did.
“It got better,” Mangino said Saturday, before KU’s blowout win over UCF, which put the Jayhawks a win away from a second straight bowl appearance. “Lance (Leipold) showed up, Travis (Goff) showed up. It got better … A lot of my former players are having the time of their life.”
Reid, a Wichita native and a former Big 12 Conference defensive player of the year, said he’s continued supporting the team in a low-profile fashion over the years — “I actually sit right over here in the bowl,” he said, gesturing over to the north end of the stadium. “I just kind of sneak in, watch games, cheer on my team and sneak out of here.”
For a while, he added, “it wasn’t a whole lot of fun to be a KU fan.”
“Coach Leipold and the kids got it going in the right direction,” Reid said, “and I think they’re going to keep it going.”
Fellow inductee Tony Sands, who played running back in the Glen Mason era, was somewhat more circumspect, even as he too expressed pride in being able to “turn on the television and get excited to see KU football.” He suggested that the school could lose the head coach Leipold — presumably to an opening at a top national program — if fan support doesn’t improve.
“Like I tell people every time, ‘Pack the Booth, because we want to keep Lance,'” he said, invoking KU Athletics’ attendance-encouraging slogan. “We’re going to be the lifeline to keep Lance here in Lawrence, but we got to pack the Booth every, every Saturday we have the home game. Pack the Booth, make sure that is done.”
Even with the foreboding nature of Sands’ exhortation, it was a celebratory weekend for the KU alumnus, who had 15 family members in town to witness his induction. He got to go up on stage with his personal friend and fellow South Florida native Flo Rida at Late Night in the Phog on Friday.
“He said, ‘I’m going to have you introduce my song ‘My House,'” Sands recalled, “‘because this is your house. You’re a legend here.'”
And Sands capped off the weekend by getting a concrete reminder of the Jayhawks’ progression: 399 yards for KU’s dominant run game, while he, who once ran for 396 yards in a single game against Missouri, was in the house.
“I asked Tony what he thought of our rushing performance today,” Leipold said postgame. “Tony gave us a thumbs up, so that felt good.”