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KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Everything about Mark Mangino has gotten bigger.
No, not in that way.
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| Mangino led Kansas to a 12-1 record and an Orange Bowl win last season. (US Presswire) |
"The fact that there are expectations are a victory in itself," Kansas' seventh-year coach said Tuesday at the Big 12 media days.
For once, those expectations are larger than the coach. That's not a jab at Mangino, who looked tanned, relaxed and, yes, thinner, ready to follow a 12-1 season. That was the best record among BCS-conference schools, tying Hawaii for the best record in I-A. Few people realized that at the end of the season. Even fewer in college football cognoscenti care now.
Programs like Kansas aren't supposed to last. The expectations are coming from the small tight knot of KU football fans and donors. To everyone else, the Jayhawks are a one-hit wonder because they have a white KU on the side of their blue helmets and not a burnt orange steer or an intertwined "O" and "U".
New Mexico's Rocky Long might have been the voice of the silent majority when he suddenly and viciously ripped into Mangino's team this week this during Mountain West media days.
"I mean, who did Kansas play last year?" Long said, questioning KU's non-conference schedule that included Florida International, Toledo, Central Michigan and Southeastern Louisiana.
That, from a coach who tested his squad against the likes of New Mexico State and Cal State-Sacramento in 2007.
"You tell me," Mangino said, "when there was a time when the Kansas football program could beat the likes of Nebraska, Texas A&M, Colorado and Virginia Tech?"
That would be about never. Four years ago, though, things got so desperate that Mangino created a controversy to take pressure off his struggling team. After a tough loss to Texas, he accused Big 12 officials of favoring the Longhorns. Mangino said this summer that he made up the whole thing.
"I had never been around a team that had been so disheartened about a loss," he said. "It was to save the team. I knew I was going to get criticism for it and take some bullets, but Kansas hadn't had a winning program for many years. We were trying to get it on (our) feet."
As recently as a year ago the coach was basically on notice from AD Lew Perkins going into 2007: Win at least seven or face The Big Haircut. It all came together so well and so fast that Mangino is still enjoying his ride up to the coaching elite level. The Associated Press and Football Writers Association of America (among others) made him their Coach of the Year. His name is gold within the profession.
Ohio State's Jim Tressel, an old boss, were among those lauding Mangenius' work ethic as the Buckeyes prepared to lose another national championship game last year. Back in the day, Mangino was a grad assistant for Tressel at Youngstown State. That was his day job. By night, he was a medical first responder on the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority.
"You go out and try to keep somebody from bleeding to death before police or medical helicopter gets there," Mangino said in December.
But for years, the face of Kansas football was ... Kansas basketball. That, and all those rude jokes about Mangino's weight. Kansas' athletic department went to war recently against a T-shirt business, suing it, in part, for producing shirts that read: Our Coach Can Eat Your Coach and Our Coach Beat Anorexia. The lawsuit was over licensing rights. Students didn't care. The shirts went from clever to must-haves when Kansas made its Orange Bowl run.
"To me you have to laugh at those things," Kansas linebacker Mike Rivera said. "I think people are trying to sell a T-shirt and make a buck. You've got to watch what you say sometimes and consider other people's feelings."
When Mangino was hired in December 2001, a rotund local columnist asked the new coach about his weight. Would his appearance keep him from demanding effort and discipline from his players?
No, the coach shot back, does your paper think you can do the job? The room, full of Kansas supporters, erupted in applause.
"It didn't (make a difference in recruiting)," Rivera said. "He's the coach on the field. It matters what he says and what he does."
Still, there was little more to dwell on until recently when the program announced that it was going to step up and play with the big boys for the foreseeable future. Two years ago, Mangino was making $650,000 per year. Coming off the Orange Bowl win, Perkins recently extended his coach through 2012 at $2.3 million per season.
The new $31 million football facility is so new the wires dangle out of walls ready to be connected to some high-tech device or another. Other wires are connected to the ever-present flat screens throughout the building. Sixty-three of them.
The video guys can get a live feed from the practice field, meaning they can edit tape while Mangino is blowing his whistle. The building has the brushed steel look of a facility housing a program that has won multiple national championships instead of one that has been to just three major bowls since 1948.
Mangino's corner office would make Donald Trump jealous, with an elevated view of the Memorial Stadium field. A sign outside warns the public to stay out for now but there is enough to be seen during a private tour to determine that maybe a 12-1 season isn't just a rare spike in KU's fortunes.
"It's fabulous," said John Hadl, a Kansas college football Hall of Famer turned chief fundraiser. "We finally said, 'See, I told you so.'"
That I-told-you-so would be showing the world that after decades of indifference Kansas football is going to compete for the same things as Kansas basketball. Start by asking the building's chief donor: Tom Kivisto, captain of KU's 1974 Final Four team.