Oklahoma Sooners & NFL Blog

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Ex-players: Coach said ‘hurtful’ things
By Joe Schad
ESPN.com

Former Kansas football players are speaking out about an investigation into allegations coach Mark Mangino has verbally abused or had inappropriate physical contact with players.

Former Jayhawks linebacker Mike Rivera, who plays for the Tennessee Titans, said Wednesday night he could not speak about the allegations. He plans to have a formal interview on the matter with representatives from Kansas in the next few days.

But five of Rivera’s former teammates said they were not surprised by the investigation launched by athletic director Lew Perkins. And some relayed personal experiences with Mangino.

Former Kansas wide receiver Raymond Brown, who was a senior last season, said Mangino would often “say personal, hurtful, embarrassing things in front of people.”

Brown cited two examples. He said that once, his younger brother had been shot in the arm in St. Louis. Then came a game.

“I dropped a pass and [Mangino] was mad,” Brown said. “And I said, ‘Yes, sir. Yes, sir.’ The yelling didn’t bother me. But then he said, ‘Shut up!’ He said, ‘If you don’t shut up, I’m going to send you back to St. Louis so you can get shot with your homies.’ I was irate. I wanted to hurt him to be honest with you.”

Brown said another teammate had confided in the team that his father was an alcoholic and the player dreamed of becoming a lawyer.

“One day, [Mangino] said in front of the entire team, ‘Are you going to be a lawyer or do you want to become an alcoholic like your Dad?’ ” Brown said.

Said former Kansas wide receiver Marcus Herford, also a senior last season: “I remember that. Very vividly. [Mangino] would take your personal business and he would attack you with it. There’s nothing wrong with being a disciplinarian. But there is a way to handle your players and keep them motivated. His way was to demotivate you and make you feel as low as you can go.”

Herford said he was not surprised by an allegation Mangino had poked senior linebacker Arist Wright in the chest at a walk through prior to the Colorado game.

“I remember one time he grabbed [former offensive lineman] Anthony Collins and Anthony threw his arm down,” Herford said. “I mean, to put your hands on another man? There is no reason to ever do that. And Anthony was very angry. Mangino was screaming. And Anthony was like, ‘You’re not going to do me like that.’”

Said Brown: “I don’t know if poking and grabbing is physical abuse. Sometimes Mangino maybe goes over the edge. I have seen him run up to a player and push a player. Sometimes he gets in your face and you feel like, ‘OK, now you’re in my bubble.’”

Said former Kansas running back Jocques Crawford, who played one season before transferring: “Every other day, he’d get in somebody’s face and be pushing them on the shoulder pads. He tried to provoke us to get us to snap. His whole motto was to ‘break you down to build you up.’ One time I felt he’d gone to far with Mike [Rivera.]“

Crawford said he left, in part, because, “I felt disgraced by my coach.”

“At halftime, he could pick out players one by one and talk about their flaws,” Crawford said. “He got to me and he says, ‘We have a guy on the team that says he’s going to rush for 2,000 yards and he’s not shown me s—. After I arrived, players told me, ‘You have two weeks until you see the real Mangino come out.’ Some of the things he would say or do were totally outrageous.”

“He’d say things like, ‘I’ll send you back to the street corner where you came from,’” Herford said.

“He’d say, ‘This is Kansas, you’re not back home,’” Crawford said. “He’d say, ‘You’re not back with your homies. If you’re not careful you’ll be watching the game in the stands with your homies. You’ll be back in that neighborhood.’”

Former Kansas defensive lineman Russell Brorsen said while he’s “not surprised that people are coming out of the woodwork now,” he believes Mangino is a “hard-nosed, demanding, disciplinarian.”

“I’m not going to deny that some of those things didn’t happen,” Brorsen said. “But I think part of the problem here is you have four or five years worth of stuff hitting the fan within a period of three or four days. I think [Mangino] could get pretty intense. And I think there was swearing. But my personal opinion is it’s not much worse than what you would get at another university.”

Said Herford: “Everything the players have been going through, for years, in my opinion, has been covered up by the winning. If somebody was to bring it up, they would have said, ‘Well, it’s working, because you’re winning.’ We’ve seen this all along. His coaching style has never been accepted by his players. It’s just now, it’s blowing up.’”

As the investigation continues, Mangino told reporters Wednesday night that he expects to coach against Texas on Saturday.

“I have not done anything that’s inappropriate,” Mangino said. “I have been in this conference for nearly 20 years, and what I can tell you is that our coaching intensity does not largely differ from the other Big 8 and Big 12 teams that I have observed. We have handled this program in terms of intensity and holding players accountable the same since 2002 to today. Nothing’s changed. Absolutely nothing has changed.”