Big time college coaches are vastly overpaid. We all know that. But I’ve always said, do you want your livelihood dependent on the performance of 18 to 22 year old kids? Your fortunes can turn on a dime for a multitude of reasons.
At the University of Kansas, football coach Mark Mangino’s job is hanging by a thread at the moment. By the time you read to this, he may be gone. It’s pretty amazing when you consider his team began the season as preseason favorites in the Big 12 north and they were 5-0 just five weeks ago.
They were well on their way to their third straight bowl game for the first time in school history when the wheels fell off. This week athletic director Lew Perkins held a players only meeting to discuss issues brought to him by players of repeated verbal abuse and physical contact by Mangino. An internal investigation was launched.
At that point it was probably over for Mangino. He’d been thrown under the bus by his AD who’d met with his players without his knowledge and once it went public it opened the floodgates for former players to come out with their own stories. Whether all of them are true or not, really doesn’t matter at this point. Perception is reality and the reality is that Mangino’s ability to recruit has been irreparably damaged by the abuse charges.
At his weekly gathering with the media on Tuesday, Mangino told reporters this is what happens when you’re losing and the Jayhawks are on a five game skid. He couldn’t be more right. If Kansas was 8-2 or 9-1 and leading the Big 12 north right now, it’s unlikely this would be happening. That doesn’t make it right. It’s just a fact.
Two years ago when Kansas was 12-1 and won the Orange Bowl, fans were elated when Mangino lit up Raimond Pendleton in what became a youtube moment. He unloaded on him for a full 20 seconds, grabbing his facemask, poking his chest and screaming just inches from his face for showboating after a touchdown and getting a penalty. It was OK then, today, he’s verbally abusing players. If stories from some players about the abuse being very personal and in front of the team are true, he has to go, but it shows you how fine the line is between motivation and humiliation.
What a coach could do a decade or two ago, they can’t do now. Times have changed. This is one of the quickest falls from grace by a coach in a long time. National coach of the year two seasons ago, back to back bowl games, 5-0 just five weeks ago. It’s obvious Mangino has anger issues, not to mention his obvious weight problem, but he had those before he became a head coach. He apparently has never seen fit to do anything about either and now it’s going to cost him a very high profile and high paying job.
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