Oklahoma football: Kansas to honor former fired coach Mark Mangino
By Chip Rouse
Mark Mangino was an assistant coach at OU from 1999 to 2001, and was the offensive coordinator on the last national championship Oklahoma football team, in 2000.
Mangino left Oklahoma following the 2001 season to take the head coach’s job at Kansas. It would be his second tour of duty in the Sunflower State. He was as assistant coach at Kansas State under Bill Snyder, along with future Sooner coaches Bob and Mike Stoops and Brent Venables. Mangino was at K-State for eight seasons, from 1991-98.
Manginio was the 35th head football coach at Kansas, and he has more wins than any of the KU head coaches before or after him. He fashioned a 50-48 record and three winning seasons in eight full seasons in Lawrence, Kansas.
In 2007, Kansas won a school record 12 games, suffered only one loss that season (to archrival Missouri), and defeated a higher-ranked Virginia Tech team in the Orange Bowl. Mangino received several National Coach of the Years honors as a result of the magical turnaround season.
Everything was going great for a Kansas football team that wasn’t used to commanding much respect on the gridiron…until is wasn’t.
Two seasons after the record-setting 2007 Kansas football season, Mangino was placed under investigation by University of Kansas officials for alleged misconduct stemming from harsh treatment toward his players. Mangino was ultimately forced to resign because of the publicity surrounding the investigation.
The University of Kansas announced this week that Mangino has been invited back, along with a couple of his former players, for a special Hall of Fame ceremony honoring the 2007 Jayhawk football team. The ceremony will take place at the Kansas football season opener on Sept. 2 against Southeast Missouri State.
Mangino told the Lawrence Journal World, and later reported by NBC Sports, that he wasn’t sure he was going to accept the invitation at first, given the way his relationship ended with the University of Kansas.
“It just came out of the blue, it caught me off guard,” he told the Journal-World. “It was hard for me to say no when your players are going to be honored.”
Kansas football had not had a winning season in seven years when Mangino took over as the Jayhawk head coach. His first season in Lawrence, his team actually did worse than the year before he arrived. The Jayhawks were just 2-10 overall in the 2002 season and failed to win a conference game.
In year two under the Jayhawks’ new head coach, however, Kansas doubled its season wins to six. And by year four, in 2005, Mangino led the Jayhawks to their first winning season as a member of the Big 12 and their first in 10 years. Kansas finished the 2005 season with an overall record of 7-5.
After leaving the head-coaching job at Kansas, Mangino was as an assistant head coach by his alma mater, Youngstown State. He remained in that position for one year before becoming the offensive coordinator at Iowa State. A year and a half into the Iowa State position, Mangino and
Cyclone head coach Paul Rhoads disagreed over the direction of the offensive unit. Rhoads terminated Mangino in October 2015. Less than a month later, Rhoads fell victim to the same fate.
Shortly after his firing at Kansas, Oklahoma players were asked how hard-edged a coach Mangino was while he was at OU under Bob Stoops. Almost to the man, they acknowledged he was old school and practiced tough love. He pushed his players to be their best. and the Sooners’ record during his two seasons as offensive coordinator speak for themselves: 13-0. 11-2, including a national championship.