A Look At In Season Defensive Improvement Under Mark Mangino

Will someone PLEASE actually look at Mark Mangino’s Big 12 record? It’s f*cking pathetic. If you’re unhappy with how Gill handled playing 6 undefeated opponents so far this year, that’s fine. But stop pretending like Mark Mangino was some kind of super-coach. The guy had one fluky year when the conference was down, and he didn’t have to play Texas or Oklahoma.

STOP.

Defensive kudos that anybody wants to credit to MM (whose specialty has always been offense) actually should go to Bill Young. He was MM’s DC from 2002-2007 before leaving for Miami and then finally following TBP’s deep pockets back home to OSU (where he is doing just fins as DC, than you very much). Anyone would be hard pressed to argue — based on 2008 and 2009 — that the D credit should go to MM instead of Young.

@KG — no need to apologize for your post here, it is absolutely appropro. All these young and historically handicapped MM supporters make a big deal about MM being the winningest coach in KU history, but that’s only in total # of wins. The man coached more games than any other coach in KU history, he ought to have more wins than any other coach in KU history.

But looking at W-L% and comparing him to other coaches who stayed at least two years in the job, MM has the #11 W-L% in KU history @ .510, just behind Jack Mitchell’s .511. However, for real comparison of coach value, note that Jack’s conference W-L% was .508, compared to MM’s .359. That latter # is simply sad.

MM was an okay coach who captured lightning in a bottle with Reesing, a 3 star that no other BCS team had wanted. MM had an available scholarship and took a chance with Todd late in the recruiting season. KU was Todd’s best offer, that says it all right there (not about Todd, but about KU).

2007 is something to always take pride in, but MM’s 50-48 (B12 23-41) is nothing to write home about.

If you are going to blame Turner Gill and his coaches for anything – blame them for lack of recruiting skills.

Kansas doesn’t have the studs! It was painfully obvious and it looked like they were playing most teams second and third teams.

All the well planned X’s and O’s mean nothing if jr. college level players are filling the positions.

Where’s the beef?

If this was mean’t as a slam, it wasn’t.

Quite a frew of our superstar recruits haven’t done squat in college. Give K-State, Boise State, OU, OSU credit – they have done more with less for sure. Or maybe they just know how to evaluate better?

I suspect coaching might have a little to do with it as well. However, to test your talent theory, let’s do this. I’ll take my 11 – 5 star recruits and play your 11 – 3 star recruits, we will both run the same offense and defense and I will beat you 9 out of 10 times. Do you agree with this?
Sax solo’s argument is that UT has more money and is a larger school and that is why we get better recruits. This would be true if we were paying recruits out of our student body, but, of course that is ridiculous. Furthermore, if money and the size of the school were the criteria, Central Florida or Rutgers would dominate.

But, of course, I know what you are talking about. UT is a well respected, national football brand and is square in the middle of the largest recruiting state in the union. Most of the better Texas kids want to play football here.
But, not all – ask OU and Okie lite – both of whom would be DII colleges without Texas kids. And, how about Kansas? Don’t you have your own contingent of Texas kids?

But, I stand by what I said – you don’t have the studs and your coaching staff is responsible for that. They, however, get a pass if this is only their 2nd year, but two years from now is grade time, don’t you think?

Also, it is an exaggeration to state that KSU has murdered us every year. It’s true they have won 6 out of 11 games with us, but we DID win 5 and the ones we lost were not ALL beat downs!

Besides, why is KANSAS bragging about KSU? :-)

of thinking we can just recruit our way out of average coaching. (Which doesn’t really seem to work for you guys that great in either fball or basketball, btw.) First of all we just don’t have the recruiting draw. Second, we don’t even have average coaching—-we have miserable coaching, which at this point seems to have become a whole new recruitment negative by itself.

No one ever said talent didn’t matter, and I’m not sure where you’re going with your switch teams test since it’s a bit of a straw man. (The sad thing is I’m not even sure KU would win half those games, if you account for all the factors.) Whatever you try to prove you’re going to come back to the real world where KSU beats you regularly. Which isn’t bragging on KSU. Please, by all means, beat them to a pulp.

Coaching matters a lot. We may have the option to find a good coach, but we will NEVER have the option of having an edge on talent in the Big 12 and being able to coast on that. KU can’t be that team.