STRANGE YEAR: Mark Mangino noted the unusual college football season, from six more more teams being in the mix to make the BCS Championship Game in the second half of November, to the great success the 72-year-old Bill Snyder has had in his second turn at Kansas State, to the problems that surfaced last week at Penn State that cost Joe Paterno his job.
Mangino and Bob Stoops, as well as ousted Arizona coach Mike Stoops, were on Snyder’s staff in the 1990s.
A native of Pennsylvania, Mangino said Paterno’s firing after the allegations of child molestation by a former Penn State assistant coach hit home.
Mangino has seen a lot of the strange 2011 strike close to home. He was an assistant for a year under Jim Tressel at Youngstown State, where Mangino played. Tressel, of course, lost his job this year in all the irregularities that surfaced at Ohio State starting last December.
It’s easy for fans who don’t follow Kansas football closely to forget just how successful Mark Mangino was in building the Jayhawks’ program before he was controversially shown the door nearly two years ago.
When Arkansas upset top-ranked LSU in Baton Rouge 50-48 in three overtimes in the 2007 regular-season finale, Kansas was sitting one slot behind the Tigers at No. 2 and playing Missouri that same weekend. Mangino’s Jayhawks lost their only game of the season to Missouri 36-28, but earned a BSC bowl spot anyway and defeated Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl to start 2008.
Mangino and the KU administration were in a dispute over his contract, and the coach was alleged to have struck a player. That gave the Jayhawk athletic brass at the time an excuse to unload Mangino and his big contract.
After nearly two full seasons on the sidelines, Mangino said Monday during a visit with the Little Rock Touchdown Club that he’s ready to return to coaching.
“My wife says I need a team,” he said after the luncheon at the Embassy Suites. “She’s had me around for a year and a half now and she says I really need a team to be around.”
Mangino said he’s had some overtures already, but he’s looking for the “right job” where the fanbase is fully behind the football program. Even at KU, football played second fiddle to the tradition rich basketball program, but that didn’t stop Mangino from guiding the Jayhawks to five bowls in eight years.
There were at least a couple of references during the Touchdown Club luncheon about the opening at Ole Miss. The Rebels could do a lot worse that Mangino, who took over at Kansas when the program was in the dumps. Last we checked, the Jayhawks weren’t doing too good without Mangino now, either. (Turner Gill was chosen to replace Mangino).
Mangino’s previous appearance in Little Rock before Monday was in early 2001, after Oklahoma had won the national championship, to accept the Broyles Award as the top assistant coach in the nation. He joined Bob Stoops at OU as offensive line coach in 1999, and became offensive coordinator the very next season when Mike Leach left Norman to become Texas Tech’s head coach.
That would be quite a pair together — Mangino and Leach. And Mangino had the large crowd Monday laughing about the year they were together on the OU staff, and Leach always seemed to end up watching Mangino’s TV, keeping the big man awake, during recruiting season well into the early morning. Hard to believe both are looking for jobs. And, just in case you didn’t notice, Texas Tech lost to Oklahoma State 66-6 on Saturday, the Red Raiders fourth straight shellacking after shocking Stoops and OU in Norman 41-38.
Mangino and a friend drove from Naples, Fla., to Fayetteville for Saturday’s Hog win over Tennessee and returned to Little Rock on Sunday, where some of the Touchdown Club board took them to dinner. Mangino was a guest in the USA Drug skybox on Saturday night. He said, “I’d never watched a college football game from a skybox like that.”
He was high on the Razorbacks after seeing them in first for the first time Saturday, as the Hogs walloped Tennessee 49-7. “They’ve got such great speed, both the offensive and defensive lines are physical and quick, and they are well coached.”
Eric Magino is an excellent speaker and I enjoyed listening to him on November 14, 2011. Here is a story from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette:
— In 2007, Mark Mangino led Kansas to its best football season in school history.
The Jayhawks went 12-1 and climbed to No. 2 in the BCS rankings before a 37-28 loss to No. 4 Missouri in the regular-season finale. After a 24-21 victory over Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl, the Jayhawks finished seventh in the final Associated Press rankings and Mangino was the consensus coach of the year.
Two years later, the Jayhawks finished 5-7. After an internal investigation, Mangino was fired after he was accused of boorish behavior and violent actions, including grabbing his players and verbal abuse.
Mangino, 55, and living in Naples, Fla., spoke Monday at the Little Rock Touchdown Club’s weekly luncheon at the Embassy Suites hotel. When asked about his departure from Kansas, he didn’t elaborate, choosing to focus on the positives in an eight-year run that resulted in a 50-48 record, including 23-41 in Big 12 games and a 3-1 in bowl games.
“I choose to dwell on the positives and all the good things we did,” Mangino said after pausing when asked what happened during his final year at Kansas. “We accomplished a lot of things that gave me a sense of pride.”
However, he did talk a lot about college football’s off-thefield issues.
On Penn State, which fired longtime coach Joe Paterno on Wednesday night after the board of trustees determined he didn’t do enough when told that a graduate assistant saw former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who has been charged with molesting eight boys, assaulting a boy in a school shower:
“It’s so painful to know that children were allegedly molested in the school’s football facility and as a parent, it’s got to knock you out,” Mangino said. “Growing up in Newcastle, Pa., I grew up idolizing Joe Paterno and I still do, but I can’t help but be disappointed.
“I used to tell my players that the outside world can be cruel and I would tell them that the football complex was their safe haven where you had teammates and coaches you could come to. I cannot comprehend the fact that young children were molested in that locker room. That is something I struggle with as a parent and a coach and it pains me to know that it could happen.
“Penn State will have to redefine itself and hopefully, we’ll all learn from this.”
On conference realignment that has seen Missouri and Texas A&M join the SEC, Pittsburgh and Syracuse join the Atlantic Coast Conference and West Virginia and TCU join the Big 12:
“I remember sitting at a staff meeting and I had a feeling we were going to go to superconferences, but I thought the NCAA, atheltic directors and networks would do it in regards to geographic boundaries,” Mangino said.
“The thing I’m disappointed in is that it’s not happening. I know on each coast, nobody cares about Kansas-Missouri, but here, that’s a big deal and now there’s a good chance that won’t happen again. Nebraska-Oklahoma might not play again.”
On the state of the Big 12 — which saw Nebraska leave for the Big Ten, Colorado leave for the Pacific-12 and almost saw Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State leave for the Pac 12 before Commissioner Dan Beebe resigned under pressure last month:
“I feel bad for the Big 12 because it is a great conference and I hope it can hang in there,” Mangino said.
Mangino said he never had the feeling that Texas was trying to run the conference. He also said while at Kansas he stayed away from the business issues that have dominated headlines recently.
“We would be briefed on things after the fact, but the athletic directors were usually involved in those meetings,” Mangino said. “I always concerned myself with what goes on the field and never focused on the business aspect.”
On his future, Mangino said he would like to coach again, but is waiting for the right opportunity.
“I’d like to be a head coach, but I’m willing to be a coordinator or a line coach if somebody needs one,” Mangino said. “I feel I have a few snaps left in me and I want to go to a place where football is important.”
The Daily Hatch 