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FEDEX ORANGE BOWL

January 2, 2008

Mark Mangino

MIAMI, FLORIDA

JASON ALPERT: With 36 hours left to prepare for the Orange Bowl, what are you doing to prepare your team?
COACH MANGINO: Not much. As they say, the hay is in the barn. We'll have some meetings today, a walk through, and have at it tomorrow.

Q. Todd Reesing told us yesterday that you like to tell jokes every now and then in practice. Can you give us an example of one of those and why do you do that specifically with Reesing?
COACH MANGINO: Well, I do it not just specifically to Reesing. He thinks it's exclusive to him (smiling). He'd like to think that. But I do that with everybody. And that's my way of keeping people loose. You know, we're playing a football game. We're not going to fight a war. The kids should enjoy the experience.
I tell jokes, and sometimes I don't tell jokes either. Does he tell you about the other things I tell him?

Q. Can you tell us one?
COACH MANGINO: No. It's exclusive to our team. I only have so much material. I don't want it to get out (smiling).

Q. You were mentioning how you like to keep your team loose, and you had said how you want your team to enjoy this Orange Bowl experience. You've been great all year keeping your team focused. Has it been more of a challenge when you've got beach parties and all the things that come with the Orange Bowl and the layoff from your last football game, has that been the biggest challenge of keeping a team focused or how have you balanced the two this week?
COACH MANGINO: I agree with you there is a challenge to keep your team focused when they have a long period of time when they don't play a game. They're going to spend a week in a beautiful city, and with a lot of things to do. But our players still have been very focused in meetings and on the practice field.
I can't tell you that our preparation or intensity or tempo in practice has changed. It has not. I'd say the biggest challenge are the veteran players really kids are going to play, they're really focused in.
I had to give a little talk to some of the younger kids and scout team and some of the guys that think they're on vacation. I told them they need to have the same focus, even though they're not going to play, they still need to have the same focus as the older players. And if they didn't, we'd have a nice party when this semester started back at school at 6:00 a.m. for all the scout kids that didn't think this was a time to be focused. But they've been great. I think we'll be just fine.

Q. What might this Orange Bowl appearance do for your program going forward in terms of recruiting, exposure, some of those kind of off field things that are important in continuing to grow with the program?
COACH MANGINO: There's no doubt that all of the teams are playing high profile games such as BCS games, the Orange Bowl. It's a shot in the arm for your program. There's no question about it in all areas.
Recruiting, I think it opens doors. I think it really has more effect on next year's recruiting class than it will be the group we sign in February. But there are so many positives that go with it.
I think recruiting is one where your program is viewed on a national level. The perception is changing now. And just the fact that our kids get a chance to experience this is a great reward for our players that are worked so hard, made so many sacrifices to get here.

Q. There's going to be a big, big group of people from your town for this game. I would think it's neat to be a favorite son and have everybody from the old neighborhood where you group who are so proud of you and the success that you've had. Can you talk about that maybe a little bit and what that means to you? How that adds to what's been a great year?
COACH MANGINO: Well, you know, I think a lot of my friends back home have had more fun than I've had during this run here at Kansas. And that's great. You know, I'm glad to see, you know, they're all taking an interest. It's had a positive impact on them.
As far as me personally, you know, those guys would be my friend if I was out digging a ditch somewhere, it wouldn't change. It's just they're kind of excited it's one of them. One of their guys that's having this opportunity to coach in the Big 12. Having an opportunity to coach in the Orange Bowl.
I think the thing that is strong about those bonds is that, you know, no matter what I was doing, we all care about each other. I don't think the feelings would change, you're just kind of excited that somebody from the old neighborhood is doing something that's getting a little attention.
Lot of those guys are successful business men, attorneys, own their own businesses, corporate executives that work just as hard as I do. But for some reason, they take joy in a football coach having success. Society's a little screwed up in that way.
I have a friend who is a doctor, and he's keeping people alive. He's a cardiologist. He helps hundreds and hundreds of people every year stay alive and keep their health. And he has patents on different things for heart disease. Nobody knows him. I coach football, and it's a big deal. That's the way our society is.

Q. Coach Beamer and Coach Bud Foster have had a lost admiration and nice things to say for you in the past month. Especially because they feel like you have done it similar to the way they've done it. Taken kids that often aren't always the top recruits, some who are, but taking guys who aren't and molding them into your system, kids who are willing to work hard. I want to know if you would agree with that? Give me your thoughts on that?
COACH MANGINO: There's no question. We went back and evaluated tech's program from the time Coach Beamer arrived. He's right.
There are a lot of parallels between how Tech started out and how we're starting out. You can't always get the best players, so you look for some kids who have some intangibles, work ethic. Toughness, smarts, understand the value of hard work. Team work. And that's how we've done it here.
Then as you get better and better the talent pool increases. But I'm not worried about the talent pool. I think we're going good with the kind of kids that we're getting. I think they're talented enough.
The key is that in our program right now as coaches, we feel that the whole is greater than any of its parts. So there are a lot of similarities between what we're trying to do, and what Coach Beamer and his staff has accomplished.

Q. Probably the most elementary or simplistic way to look at this game would be to say it's your offense against their defense. Do you think with the numbers that your offense has put up consistently all year that your defense has really been overlooked?
COACH MANGINO: Well, offense sells tickets. Fans like to see a lot of offense. They like to see poise, they like to see big plays. When that happens, it always takes away from your defense.
Our defense is pretty salty. We've done a great job all year against the run. We've been solid against the pass. You know, we're a physical team. Our defense, most Big 12 coaches will tell you that have played us if they had to use one term to describe our team, especially our defense, they wouldn't talk about any particular player or particular scheme, they'd tell you they play hard and they play physical. That's what our kids do. That's why we've been able to be a pretty good defensive football team this year in several major categories on a national level.

Q. You've been to BCS bowl games as an assistant coach. But how much better is this one?
COACH MANGINO: Well, I don't know if it's better. When I came as an assistant, I was responsible for guys on offense, half the team. Now I'm responsible for everybody.
I will tell you I know the point you're making, I'm not trying to be facetious. As head coach you're excited to be able to bring a team to a BCS game, to be able to bring Kansas to the Orange Bowl.
When I first got the job at Kansas if I said that to somebody, they'd laugh at me. And guys have shown up with two real big nets and a straight jacket, because nobody ever thought that this would ever happen in their lifetime.
The prevailing thought when I came here was that we're not very good. I don't think we'll ever be very good. You know, the football team is something to do until we get our basketball season started.
I listened to it. Our assistant coaches listened to it, and our players did. I told our players don't buy into it. You can be as good as you want to be. It may take three years, five years, six years, ten years, we'll have a chance to play and have our day. And our day is coming tomorrow.
Our kids believe in that. They keep, as I say all the time, don't worry, good, bad, whatever goes wrong. Any time you get knocked off course, things aren't going well, don't pout, don't feel bad for yourself, just keep sawing wood. It will happen, and it has.

Q. With all the high profile openings that have come about this year, why do you think your name hasn't even been mentioned in the rumors?
COACH MANGINO: Well I've made myself pretty clear from the outset that we not only have a good football team this year, we're going to be even better next year. I'm not going anywhere.
I never say never. I'm not going to say never, but the grass isn't always greener on the other side, and I know some people that would be glad to tell you that story firsthand.
I've invested a lot of hard work and time at Kansas in the face of adversity, among doubters for much of my time here. We're getting it where we want it to be, and I think we're only going to be better next year. I'm not looking to go anywhere else. I'm looking to making another run next season, and who knows, the season after that, and the season after that.
As I said, I'll never say never. You're not going to have to worry about me running off in the middle of the night to some strange town interviewing for a job and not telling anybody at Kansas. That's not how I operate.
The people I've been associated with in this profession are loyal people, and they usually stick around. That's my intent.

Q. Being a special teams guru that he is, Frank Beamer tried to pull a little file of your punting game, only he said he couldn't find that many punts. Have the stars aligned just perfectly for you guys this year to have the disparity you've had between the number of times that you've scored and the number of times that you have to kick it away?
COACH MANGINO: I don't believe in stars aligning. I believe in coaching fundamental football and players executing. The fact that we haven't punted a lot means that our offense is moving the ball, getting first downs. Doing the things that are important for our offense, so we don't have to punt the ball.
But we've punted it. We've had some bad punts, too. But we try to keep those at a minimum. Our special teams played well. One of the things that we've stressed when we came to Kansas was special teams. We've put a lot of time and effort into it.
In the early years when we weren't very good, we won some games in field position based on our special teams, defense and special teams. That's really been the backbone of our program since we've been here.
Now that our offense is really moving and got a lot of play makers there, I think that's why we're having the results this year that maybe we didn't have in the past when you put those all together.

Q. Virginia Tech has a real good pass-rush, how do you think your talent measures up to theirs up front?
COACH MANGINO: Tech does have a good pass-rush team. They've led their best pass-rusher is Chris Ellis, No. 49. Comes off the ball flat-back, rip-and-dip, gets to the quarterback. I think we have a good match-up with our tacklers on him. Our offensive tackles are our best pass protectors.
Our guys inside do a good job. We've done a pretty good job of protecting all year. I think Tech does pose a challenge for us. But I feel like with our protection schemes and the way we do things, that our kids will hold up very well.

Q. Have you and your staff spent a lot of time down here in South Florida in the past for recruiting? Or do you pretty much stick to the area that's been hot for you?
COACH MANGINO: Well, there's no question in our recruiting that Kansas and Kansas City kids come first. That's home for us, and they get the benefit of the doubt.
But it's no secret that the place we go to next is Texas. We have 27 Texans on our team. We're recruiting at least 10 or 12 more this year.
We are in Florida. We are dabbling in the Tampa area and Orlando area. My first three years at Kansas we did recruit in South Florida. Things just didn't click for us. It just didn't work out. We had a couple of kids who were committed to us, and at the last minute, you know without our knowledge, took other visits and committed somewhere else.
We had some kids that committed to us but weren't academically eligible, and really at the end of the day we realized they would not make it. So we just felt Texas was going well for us. The state of Oklahoma has been very good for us.
Naturally we recruit all the Big 12 region. We dabble in Ohio. We have a couple of kids from Ohio, one we think is really going to be a great player for us. California. And we have one player from Tampa. Last year was our first year to go to Tampa. And we having Tertavian Ingram. And we suspect we will be able to get a commitment out of at least one more kid in that area this year.
But we haven't been here in Dade and Broward County area for a few years.

Q. Whether it's fair or not, a lot has been made about your schedule this year. That the Big 12 was going through a down year. Can you talk about how the league's represented itself thus far in the postseason? I think they're 4-2, the Big 12?
COACH MANGINO: I think that the Big 12 is holding its own in bowl games and has proven out that at the end of the day, they'll have their share of wins. I don't see anything down about the Big 12.
I think the Big 12, if there wasn't a rule, about three teams from one conference, the Big 12 would have three BCS teams this year. So I don't look into that.
Yeah, I looked at our schedule is a lot like Ohio State's who is playing for the National Championship. Didn't hurt them any, and it didn't hurt us. So here we are. Must have worked. We're here.

Q. Coach, it's been a long time ago, but the last time out was the only loss of the season. So how excited are you and in team to get back on the field and look to kind of wash that away?
COACH MANGINO: Well, there's two ways of looking at that. Some would say your last game out you lost for a hangover. If you watched our team all year, our kids never, ever are down or look defeated at any time.
Our team right now really is really hungry to get out on the field and play well. Because they know that they have a chance to finish a great season on a winning note. You go 11-1, and you want to have a chance to win your last one. If we do that, you know, I don't know all of the numbers, but I'm told that that would be the most wins that Kansas has ever had in football.
Somebody mentioned to me might be the most wins that any Division-I football team in Kansas has ever had. I don't know if that's true or not.
The biggest thing is we have a great year going, and we want to finish strong.

Q. To kind of revisit the schedule thing in a way. I know you're tired of hearing about it. Your kids are tired of hearing about it. Does it serve as any personal motivation to you to be on this stage? If you beat a team like Virginia Tech do you sort of feel like it would validate in the minds of doubters out there that this was a very good team, and you had a very good year. Do you almost feel like that's necessary? Or do you not worry about it in the context of what people are saying about your schedule and that sort of thing?
COACH MANGINO: No, you have to understand the big picture here, we're trying to get Kansas' football on the national stage. It is a program that's had some periods of success. They were here at the Orange Bowl in '69. They were in the Orange Bowl in '42, I believe.
It's a program that's had a tough century. So I can't worry about what the critics have to say. The decisions I make are in the best interest of our team and the future of our program. And it is appropriate for us to play the type of non-conference schedule that we did.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, nobody in December remembers who you played in September. It's what your win-loss record is. And apparently our strategy must have worked. We're here at the Orange Bowl today.
So what is the criticism? That is the point I don't understand, what are you criticizing? We should have opened up with Ohio State and USC and Penn State non-conference, and then we'd be sitting home today. It's working.

Q. While your kids haven't played on a stage this big before, you did play in a pretty incredible atmosphere at Arrowhead stadium in a big time game atmosphere. How much does that help in limiting the wide-eyes factor walking on to a stage like this one?
COACH MANGINO: I think the environment at Arrowhead Stadium is going to be similar to this. It looked like an NFL-type of environment. The place was packed. There will be more national viewers for this game on television. But they're going to be home on TV. And they don't all fit into the stadium.
So our kids are always talking about how many millions of people are going to watch this game. Yes, but they're still going to have the same amount of cameras there that they had at Arrowhead.
So you're going to be the same amount of people basically in the stands. It's going to be an exciting atmosphere. The Orange Bowl is one of the most exciting atmospheres in all of college football, any game.
I don't think our kids are going to be really caught up in that. I think in the beginning they're going to feel their way. That's been the m o of our team. We felt our way out against Southeastern Louisiana State. That's just how our kids are.
But will the stage be a factor in whether we play well or not? I don't think it will at all.

Q. For outsiders, the path that you've taken to get here is very amazing, I guess. Can you talk at all about the support that your wife has given you as you've gone on that ride?
COACH MANGINO: I've talked about my life story for three months now. I've talked about every member of my family and what they've done. My wife has been fabulous. She comes from a football background. Her brother is a former college quarterback at West Virginia. When she was young, she traveled to all the games in Morgantown, and all the road games. She had been around it all her life. So when she got mixed up with me, she knew what she signed up for. And she's been great.
But my wife has made it clear, she has been adamant about this, and I agree with her, that we haven't done anything that's really unique. There are people now that are doctors, lawyers, business people, journalists that had to eat bologna sandwiches, lived in crummy apartments. Count change at the gas pump to make sure they get to work, because it was a path to get where they wanted to be.
Just because the particular job I have, you know, public is interested in -- there is great interest in sports that the public has, everybody wants to know about my story. Certainly there have been sacrifices and aches and pains.
But there are thousands of people that work in jobs that have a real impact on people's lives that did the same thing that Mary Jane and I did. And we don't read about them in the newspapers enough.
There are people, doctors at hospitals and while they were residents, you know, they slept two hours a night. They didn't have any money. They're curing cancer and doing noble things like that.
I'm coaching football. It's a game. So I'm very fortunate, but I don't think we're unique in any way at all. Just more people need to hear the stories of other people that have made more sacrifices than we have to be successful in their field or occupation.

Q. On Anthony Collins, Caesar Rodriguez was talking a couple of days ago about how when A.C. came to campus, he maybe didn't exactly understand how good he could be. At some point in the last few years a light must have gone on with him that he wasn't going to squander his ability. Can you talk about his development and maybe the development of a work ethic? And just when if there was a turning point there for him?
COACH MANGINO: You have to understand this, Anthony came to the program with one year of high school football experience. He played basketball in high school. We took a gamble. We could see he was a big, athletic guy, so we took a shot. He didn't have any clue what Division-I football was all about. He had no clue at all.
When he first arrived and saw how hard the work was, and how intense things were, and how detailed you had to be and you had to improve your performance every day, his head was spinning. He just didn't know.
As he was here, after, I'd say, his first year he started to catch on. And he's been a very good player for us the last couple of years.

Q. Can you talk about the virtue of patience, and how it's reflected particularly on your program amongst your football players? It seems to be we live in an age of instant gratification, and your program is the antithesis of that.
COACH MANGINO: Well, you have to learn to develop patience if you don't have it, and I've been spoiled. I spent most of my career in winning programs. When I first arrived at Kansas, it was disappointing. There were days that I was frustrated and said this ought to be better. The University of Kansas deserves better than this in their football program.
We got to a point where we realized, hey, you know, here's what you can do. You can pout and come pain about it or you can roll up your sleeves and say, listen, I'll prove everybody wrong. And we came to a fork in the road. I decided we were going to take the one where we were going to roll up our sleeves and we're going to get it done.
We're going to work our tail off. There are going to be some people that laugh at us, and some try to ignore us and make fun of us. We didn't care. We were going to do at Kansas what they thought could not be done. I think one fan said it best, stopped me the other day coming out of the hotel. He said, Coach, I think your team has done the unthinkable.
And that is something, when I got on the bus I thought about it, I said, I think that guy's right. Nobody would have even given this a thought.
We told the kids we're in this together. We're going to work together, we're going to coach you. We're going to get after your butt when you do things wrong. We're going to jump on your back and pat you on the head when you do things right. We're going to have fun together. We're going to work hard together. If you believe us, we trust you, you trust us, we have a chance. We'll have a chance. And that's how it worked out.
We've got kids that just went on faith. As I've said before in other press conferences, faith is believing in something you can't see. We're lucky to have those kind of kids. So it's working out.

Q. I've been listening to you this morning talk about your job in the big picture of life. That it's not very important. On the other hand you've made reference a couple times to how everybody thinks it's very important. Does that seem ironic to you that what you do seems to be very important to everybody else, but maybe in the big picture the way you see it, not so important?
COACH MANGINO: Well, I think I've got things in perspective. I don't think what I do is not important. I think there are people who do things that are more important. I think dealing with 105 young people every day, it's kind of like, shoot, it's like being a father to 105 kids, if you want to know the truth.
Make sure they get to class every day. Make sure they do their tutoring work, they prepare for their tests. They do their community service work. You get a call in the middle of the night -- lot of coaches first thing they think is who got arrested? I don't think that way. I think who got in a car accident? Who got hurt? Whose parents do I got to call because something went wrong.
If he got in trouble, I'll take care of that. I can repair that. I've got a little way to do that. But if something happens to them, I got to explain that to his folks. In that sense, I feel like I have a great responsibility for these kids.
There's people in this world that are changing the way we live with technology. Changing health care. Changing the way we do business. Changing the way we communicate with each other. Those are really important jobs. Coaching football, they shouldn't put job at the end of my description anyhow. This isn't a job.
My grandfather, he had a job. He worked with a pick and shovel for 40 years on the Pennsylvania railroad. That's a job. This? This is fun. This is just hanging out and having a good time with your players.

Q. When you took this team over and you won two games that first year and you got people telling you that the unthinkable kind of worked. What was your dream when you took this over? Did you dream Orange Bowl at this stage? How did you kind of go about that?
COACH MANGINO: I think you've heard me talk a lot in these press conferences. They're never really exciting. It's just I'm not an exciting person. But after I did an assessment of K.U. football, I couldn't sit down and say, well, here's our five-year plan. Here's our seven-year plan, here's our ten-year plan. I couldn't do it. There were too many unknowns.
We didn't have facilities that were up to snuff. I didn't know when those facilities were going to be done. We're in the Orange Bowl and they're still not done, but we're going to have them next year.
Was I going to have resources to keep good support staff personnel to build infrastructure? Was I going to be able to get people to stay in the program that are quality people? Was I going to have the resources that are needed overall to be a top Big 12 program?
So I decided that the things that I could control, I would control. And the things that I couldn't, I would lobby for them and politic for them, but I wouldn't let them take me off track.
Here's what I knew I could control - I could control how our kids prepare on the practice field and in the meeting rooms. How they work in the weight room. How they develop on the field as players. Get them to class. Get them to tutoring. All the things as a coach that I could control and that my staff could control, we did. All the other things were left in the hands of others.
Fortunately, about a year and a half after I got here in Kansas we hired a new A.D. Lew Perkins. And Lew has helped me with infrastructure, salaries for people. Try to do things first class. Even when we didn't have a big budget, our kids traveled first class.
I told the old administration, if you have to take it out of my pay, our kids are going to travel first class. They're going to dress first class, they're going to look first class.
So I know I'm going off on a tangent here. I guess my point is I never sat six years ago and said we'll be at the Orange Bowl in 2008. Let's work on the things that we can control. Let's get better every day. Let's go one step at a time, keep at it, and something we feel hard work and dedication each and every day, the by product will be bowl games and championships.

Q. At what point in the season did you realize that you had something special? Was there a certain game or certain point in the season?
COACH MANGINO: You know, I felt like we went on the road to play Kansas State, we hadn't played on the road in any of our non-conference games. All four of them were at home. As you heard earlier, we schedule well in non-conference. So it was a consensus that we wouldn't win on the road. But we were playing in Kansas.
We were just going down the road 90 minutes, and everything I read, we couldn't beat them. Well, we beat them at home and had a chance to beat them by a bigger score. But made some mistakes, but nonetheless, won.
After that game, I felt like we've got to change one more road game. If we can win our next road game, I'll feel pretty good about this team maybe having a chance to win all the games or most of them. And then we went and played Colorado in Boulder, and Boulder's a tough place to play.
And they remind you everywhere you go of the altitude, and your head's going to explode by the fourth quarter and all that stuff. Our kids, technically, wore Colorado down in their own stadium. After that game I thought we had a chance to be pretty good.

Q. Out of curiosity, during the regular season in a typical week, what is your work schedule usually like in terms of the amount of hours you spend on this every day and how many days each week?
COACH MANGINO: Oh, a lot. Typical day, game's on Saturday, we come in Sunday morning watch the tape. Grade it. Have a staff meeting. Watch the tape of the players. Have an hour and 10 minute workout with the players. Go back in and we watch the opponent's tape, I don't know, till 10:00, 10:30.
We'll get in at 8:00 o'clock on Monday. We don't do anything on Monday. We give our kids a rest then. Gives them a chance to start the academic work week on the right foot. They have no football responsibilities on Monday. Then we have a marathon. We go from 7:30, 8:00 o'clock that morning until when we need to be done. 10:00, 10:30, maybe 11:00 o'clock.
Tuesday same hours. Wednesday the same hours. Thursday all the coaches we all getting to home after practice. At least they do. I have to do a radio show before I go home. But after practice, the coaches get to go home with their families.
Then Friday, you know, we talk recruiting in the morning. Polish up the game plan and then we have dinner with our players Friday night. If we're at home, we bring in a movie, and kids bring in bean bags and pillows, and we watch a movie together, and we have a quick team meeting. They get a snack and they get out of there by 9:00, 9:30.
I don't know how many hours that adds up to, but it's, you know, I try to be reasonable with our staff.
Trick-or-treat, Halloween, I let our coaches right after practice go take their kids trick-or-treating for a couple of hours. You know, if somebody has a birthday, we try to be mindful of the children on the staff. They didn't sign up for their dad to work 80, 90, 100 hours a week. But that's what the profession is.
So any time you give them a chance, the coaches to spend time with their kids and their wives, I try to do it.
JASON ALPERT: Coach, thank you very much for joining us.

End of FastScripts

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