My experience with Mark Mangino

All of a sudden the media consensus seems to be that KU football coach Mark Mangino is a jerk and an asshole. With Mangino allegedly under investigation for poking a player in the chest recently, the Lawrence Journal-World has run what seems like an article a day dredging up all of Mangino's less-than-friendly-deeds. There was the time five years ago when he cussed out a referee at his son's high school football game, the time two years ago when he cussed out a parking attendant who gave him a ticket on campus and the time four years ago when he accused the officials of favoring Texas after a game. And interviews with several former players who say Mangino was too hard on them.

The timing just seems a bit odd. For several years, as Mangino led KU to one bowl game after another, the local media basically did nothing but sing his praises, even as many of these incidents occurred. Now, with KU on a five-game losing streak, the local paper is busy letting everyone know that this finger poke was just the latest in a series of events that suggests Mangino was a jerk all along.

Taken on a case-by-case basis, the evidence is somewhat flimsy:

1. Yes, he was wrong to scream at the officials at his son's game. He's supposed to set a better example and be a better ambassador for KU. But if yelling at the refs at your kid's HS game is the standard for jerkhood, then I have encountered a few thousand jerks in my five years of covering high school sports. It's unfortunate, but it happens all the time. At least Mangino apologized later. Most parents don't.

2. As far as the parking attendant incident, again, he was out of line, but again, he wasn't out of the ordinary. Many students don't make it through four years at KU without getting into at least one yelling match with the parking department. They're commonly called the "parking Nazis," for Pete's sake. Again, the situation was "resolved internally," which to me suggests that Mangino apologized, and possibly gave the attendant some free football gear. Again, if this is the standard for jerkhood, then there are hundreds of jerks walking free on the KU campus right now.

3. Mangino criticized the Big 12 officials for a terrible call after the Texas game, and he actually was relatively calm about it. There was no screaming, there was no swearing. He just said, "You know what that call was about: BCS. That's right, dollar signs." I don't agree with him. I don't think the refs were really trying to make sure that Texas got into a BCS bowl to make more money for the conference. But I do think they were a bit blinded by the burnt orange of the Texas jersey and the tradition that comes with it and gave the Longhorns an incredibly generous call that cost KU the game. And when Mangino said what he did at the post-game press conference I -- and I would guess a lot of other KU fans -- yelled, "Right on!"

4. As for the criticism of former players, I don't think you could find a Div. I coach who was loved by all the players he ever coached. There's over 100 players every year that's he's responsible for on and off the field -- over 100 testosterone-soaked young men who have been taught that hitting people is a virtue. I don't condone verbal or physical abuse, but you have to have a bit of a heavy hand to keep order in that situation. Not everybody is going to appreciate that.

Again, taken one-by-one, these incidents don't seem like much. But lumped together, as they have been in the Journal-World, they paint a picture of an overbearing asshole with a hair-trigger temper and no consideration for other people. My one experience with Mangino was quite different.

Much of the media attention about my battle with meningitis focused on my four-month stay in the hospital. But the months afterward were difficult too. I was confined to a wheelchair, still depending on my parents and brothers to help me with everyday tasks like showering and using the bathroom. I was still coming to terms with being a quadruple amputee and, with my mobility severely limited, fighting extreme boredom.

During this difficult time in my life, Mangino called my parents and invited me to come by his office and chat for awhile. He didn't know me, but he'd read the newspaper reports and knew that I was a sports fan/low-level sports writer. So my younger brother drove me to Lawrence one day and then pushed my chair into the elevator and up to Mangino's office. Once there the coach gave me that year's media guide and a nice polo shirt, just like the ones the coaches wear (actually I think it might have been out of Mangino's personal closet -- it was way too big for me). Those things were nice, but as far as I was concerned, the best thing he gave me was time. Mangino spent nearly an hour talking to me and Dan, chatting about the upcoming season, how the team was still struggling, but he saw signs of things turning around, what he thought of some of the other teams in the Big 12, etc. We also talked some about his family, including his daughter, who was a fellow KU journalism grad.

Mangino was friendly, forthcoming and jovial. I don't remember him using a single curse word. Maybe it was just cause he was talking to a kid in a wheelchair who had just lost most of his fingers and toes. Even so, he wasn't getting anything out of it. There was no press release about our visit and the Journal-World didn't report on it. It was just me, him and my brother, talking football. It was a welcome distraction from the difficulties I was going through in my daily life.

Mangino is a complicated human being, like most human beings are. Does that one hour I spent with him paint a complete picture of the type of person he truly is? Probably not. But neither does putting together every nasty thing he's done in the past five years in one newspaper article.