Good Article

MParty7441 · Sep 6, 2006

I almost never post on the Jets side of the TGG now, but this article was worth posting. http://www.courant.com/sports/hc-nflmangini0906.1.artsep06,0,5646556.story?page=1&coll=hc-headlines-sports

It's really long, if someone wants to post it on here be my guest.

baamf · Sep 6, 2006

Nice read. I love his mother getting pissed off at the negative articles....

Pam · Sep 6, 2006

Excellent article. It gives a indepth look at our new coach. Thanks!

Murrell2878 · Sep 6, 2006

I'm looking forward to reading this

Jet Fuel
Mangini Provides The Boost
September 6, 2006
By ALAN GREENBERGCourant Staff Writer The Jets aren't used to brutal practices. They aren't used to running punishment laps after making a mistake.

Remember, this team was 4-12 last season.

Why can't the coach just tell us we've screwed up, they wonder, and we'll try our best not to do it again?

The Jets are used to going down, which is the direction most NFL observers believe they're headed again this season. But their new coach, Hartford's Eric Mangini, has a different idea, born of his own impatience, born of his own need to succeed.

Mangini has always been going places - and getting there faster than anyone figured he, or anyone else, possibly could. When he was a toddler and his mother wasn't ready to take him to the park, he simply went out the door of the family's modest Exeter Street home and started walking there himself until a neighbor saw him on the sidewalk and alerted his mother.

It wasn't much different in January, more than 30 years later, when the Jets introduced Mangini as coach, two days before his 35th birthday. The former defensive coordinator of the Patriots is the NFL's youngest head coach.

Outsiders wondered how such a young, beardless baby face could get there so quickly, walking into a job like that.

Of course, the insiders knew the truth: Mangini never walked into anything. He crawled, tunneled, sweated, climbed, persevered, and, most of all, learned from some great mentors, smiling and efficiently grinding his way through any task - into the wee hours and beyond.

"The lucky thing about the jobs I've had during the past 12 years," Mangini said in an e-mail interview, "is that it doesn't feel like work. I have been excited about going to work every day."

A trait that seems to run in the family.

"All my three brothers were very driven," said his sister Brenda Bellucci, 44, a West Hartford resident whose husband, Harry, is the football coach at Hartford Public High School.

Sister Pamela, 45, lives in Northumberland, Pa. Brother Scott, 41, who also lives in West Hartford, is a computer consultant. But Kyle, 39, an investment banker in Melbourne, Australia, is the sibling closest to Eric in age, temperament, and life experiences. He has lived abroad for 16 years.

"Eric and I have done a lot of the same things," said Kyle, the fourth of Carmine and Nancy Mangini's five children. "I'm really glad I'm not his younger brother. We've always done the same stuff, but he's always done it a little better than I have. Let's put it this way, he'd have been a very tough act to follow. It's good to have him as my younger brother."

It wasn't always that way. Twelve years ago, Mangini, just back from coaching Kyle's semi-pro Kew Colts for two seasons in Australia, was so eager for a job in the NFL that he worked at the Browns training camp as a ballboy, picking up dirty clothes, holding the first-down chains at practice. Browns publicist Kevin Byrne, whose son was also a ballboy, liked his attitude and, at summer's end, offered him a job as an intern on the public relations staff. Mangini's job was to put together information packets for the media and do whatever the coaching staff needed.

Mangini spent many nights hunched over "The Queen Mary," which is what Browns publicists called their huge copying machine. One night, when Kyle was back in the States visiting family, he spent four hours watching Eric run The Queen Mary, meticulously copying things that will never be requested by the Library of Congress.

Like Eric, who won the Brian Piccolo Award at Bulkeley for athletic and academic achievement, Kyle was a scholar/jock. He's a Wesleyan graduate who played football with distinction there and at Bulkeley.

Their mother figured Eric, a 5-foot-11, 215-pound nose tackle, would follow a similar career path after graduating from Wesleyan with a bachelor's degree in political science and winning the school's scholar athlete award.

So did Eric, who set a Wesleyan record with 361/2 career sacks - a mark that still stands.

But then he went to Australia and fell in love with coaching football.

In Cleveland, with copies still to be made and nearing midnight, Kyle asked his brother, in essence: How can you keep doing this?

"In the NFL," Eric told him, "no job is too small."

Besides, you never know who you'll meet at the copying machine. That's where Mangini often ran into Browns coach Bill Belichick, and the eager intern was always quick to stop what he was doing to get Belichick what he needed. After the 1994 season, Belichick, who also graduated from Wesleyan, hired Mangini as a coaches' assistant, a low-level job in which the main task is breaking down game films so coaches and players can study more efficiently.

But the 1995 Browns season turned disastrous when owner Art Modell announced at midseason that he was moving the team to Baltimore in 1996. The team fell apart, the fans mutinied and Modell fired Belichick on Valentine's Day.

That spring, Mangini and the rest of the relocating staff visited Baltimore. Scott Pioli, who was a pro personnel assistant with the Browns, got in touch with his friend Mark Shapiro, the Indians general manager. Shapiro, who had grown up in Baltimore, asked his sister whether she'd show the Browns' people around. That's when Eric Mangini met Julie Shapiro.

"I thought he had the best sense of humor," she said. "He talked about his family a lot. Family was very important to him and it's very important to me. I could tell he was a hard-working guy."

He couldn't believe someone so smart and pretty was also a great cook. He proposed during a Cape Cod vacation in 2000, and they married in Baltimore on June 9, 2001. She's Jewish and he's Catholic. Did his mother care?

"No, don't be silly," Nancy Mangini said. "She's a love. Her parents are loves."

First Time Around

Mangini moved to Long Island in 1997 for his first tour of duty with the Jets as a low-level assistant coach to Bill Parcells. Belichick, the Jets' new assistant head coach at the time, had recommended him. In those early days in Cleveland, Belichick, who had a better eye for talent than hair color, knew the brown-haired Mangini only as "the blond-haired kid." Now, at least, Belichick knew his name.

Mangini moved into a house in Point Lookout once owned by singer-songwriter Harry Chapin, who was 38 when he was killed in a car accident on the Long Island Expressway in 1981. The curly-haired troubadour's most popular song, the one that got the most radio play, was "Cat's in the Cradle," a ballad about a son whose workaholic father never had time for him. When the father retired and wanted to be with his now adult son, the son was too busy with his own life to want to be with his father, who, after being rebuffed, sadly hung up the phone, and realized - too late - that, "He'd grown up just like me. My boy was just like me."

Mangini was just a kid when that song was popular. And although he no longer lives in Chapin's old house, the song still resonates with him. During an April interview three months after the Jets hired him to replace Herm Edwards, Mangini mentioned his real estate link to Chapin. He mentioned the song, too.

"I don't want my kids singing `Cat's in the Cradle' to me," Mangini said.

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Murrell2878 · Sep 6, 2006

continued:

When Mangini sees his kids - Jake, 2, and Luke, 6 months - it's often with the help of an Ojo phone, which enables people to see each other while they talk. Driving fast, it's just 12 minutes from the Jets training complex in Hempstead, N.Y., to the Manginis' spacious old home in Garden City. The vivacious Julie usually brings the kids to see their dad at the end of practice, and Eric sneaks home to see them when he can. Usually, they're already asleep and Eric is headed back to the office. Julie's used to it.

"Going back to when he was the quality control guy [a low-level Ravens assistant] in Baltimore, he was sleeping on the floor," she said.

Said Brenda: "My brother works a billion hours."

Which makes Mangini a typical NFL coach. But Julie, instead of being resigned to her husband's work habits, relishes them.

That's probably because the first man she loved, her father, Ron, is the same way. Lawyer, college professor and author of two best-sellers, Shapiro, 64, was one of pro sports' first super agents. He represented many Orioles when the team was a powerhouse, and his first client was Hall of Fame third baseman Brooks Robinson.

"I grew up in sports," Julie said.

Their Baltimore home was a short walk from Pimlico Race Course, home of the Preakness Stakes. As a kid, Julie sold lemonade to race-goers on the sidewalk in front of her house.

When the Manginis first moved to New York, she joined a company that finds jobs for attorneys and paralegals. Eight years later, Julie Mangini, a lawyer herself, is the firm's chief operating officer.

"I love to do what I do," she said, pooh-poohing the notion that she, a woman from an affluent family with two young sons and a workaholic husband who makes more than $2 million a year, might be tempted to quit her job. "I've always worked."

Eric Mangini did not have a "Cat's in the Cradle" father. Carmine Mangini, an energy consultant who played football at Weaver High, spent as much time as he could with his wife and five kids. Eric was the baby.

"My dad was incredibly important," Kyle said. "To my dad, family was his highest priority. Sometimes, he'd do the bedtime story. He went to anything that we [participated in] and he was at every single game we played. And when you had a bad game, and we certainly had a lot of 'em, he was the kind of dad who was there to listen and be supportive rather than be critical. He was a phenomenal role model. A guy who taught us the importance not just of hard work, but ethics and honesty. If you went to the carnival and you could get in for less money if you said you were under 12, he wouldn't do it. He never did anything that wasn't honest or ethical."

Eric learned from his father, too."It would be unfair to encapsulate everything my dad taught me in a few sentences," Eric said. "My dad taught me to appreciate and respect everyone. I will never forget walking down the street with my dad one day and there was a homeless man in front of us. My father took his jacket off and handed it to the man."

But one day in 1987, Kyle and their father were playing handball when Carmine Mangini dropped dead of a heart attack. He was 56. Eric, the only child still living at home, was 16.

Football Helps

Carmine's brother, uncle Frank, who lived in East Hartford and was childless, became a sort of surrogate father (he was 67 when he died in 1995). But there was no filling the void.

It would have been an even bigger void if Eric had quit football, as his family said he was going to. But Graham Martin, his beloved high school coach, knew the boy's competitive fire. He told Eric he didn't think his father, his biggest fan, would want him to quit. Martin became Eric's other surrogate father. And Eric did what he always does - persevere.

"I wasn't there for them [her children] when Carmine died, but they were always there for me," Nancy Mangini said. "I was worthless. I fell apart. I wasn't much help to the children. They all had their own lives to go back to. But I don't know if it affected [Eric] any more than the rest of us."

His mother never remarried. Seven years ago, she sold the house on Exeter Street, which is less than a mile from where her husband is buried, and moved to a condo in Avon. For years, she has worked at the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington.

"It was a good marriage," she said, "Twenty-eight years. We had a lot of good times. My husband was more intense than I am, very focused. When he started something, he finished it. He didn't like fixing things in the house, but we couldn't afford to have someone come in and fix it. Carmine was an intense person. The three boys are pretty intense, they're go-getters. Carmine, he'd come up with ideas for the light company even though it wasn't his job [to do so]. He'd always have suggestions, `Why don't they do things this way?' His mind was always working. He was always thinking about different things, how to do them better."

And whenever her husband, who had learned to be an electrician in the Navy, had to fix something, he enlisted his kids' help.

"He'd make us hold the flashlight," Kyle said. "It didn't dawn on me until I was much older that he didn't really need anyone to hold the flashlight. But we always had to do it, and so we learned how to fix things by watching him."

When it came to school, Carmine and Nancy held their five children to a high standard.

"Not so much A's as deportment and effort," Nancy said. "Our theory was God gave you the brains, but your behavior is a reflection on us. We didn't want to hear any teachers complaining about how they behaved. That was not acceptable."

When the Jets hired Eric, Mrs. Mangini received a note from his former kindergarten teacher, telling her what a wonderful boy Eric was.

Eric had a paper route, cut lawns, shoveled snow. In high school he worked at hospitals, transporting patients to and from X-ray rooms. And he worked at Max Bibo's deli. He said he loved getting to know people from different backgrounds, which is partly why he went to Bulkeley instead of a private school.

"He was an outdoor kid, always on his bike, playing in the snow," Brenda said. "Because he was so much younger than my sister and I, he was a welcome baby. He was so loved. We loved carrying him around."

With five married children and 10 grandchildren, and with Kyle in Australia and Eric working insane hours, it's harder to get everyone together on Christmas Eve, where the signature dish is Carmine's baked stuffed shrimp, a recipe his widow diligently follows.

"I am a very blessed woman," Nancy said. "I'm so proud of all my children, and they're bringing up their children to be well-behaved. I can take my grandchildren everywhere and never be embarrassed by them."

Though Brenda says Eric's phone calls are briefer, he never forgets to call her three daughters on their birthdays.

Nancy Mangini says Eric doesn't call as much.

"He's just so busy now," she said. "I'll occasionally e-mail him when I read an article [about him] I don't like. ... He said, `Mom, you're going to have to get a thicker skin.'"

Brenda says one thing that gets to Eric is seeing people in need or being picked on. The one-day football camp he runs in Hartford each June - his charitable foundation is named for his late father and uncle - is for kids in grades eight through 12 and attracts several dozen NFL, college and high school coaches. There's a registration fee, but no one is turned away if they can't pay. When his former high school team's equipment was stolen, he gave the program $3,000 for new equipment. He has tried to help save some of his former Bulkeley classmates from the streets, with mixed results.

"He [Carmine Mangini] told us to always give back to the community," said Eric, who, aside from his family, lists his Hartford football camp's success as his proudest personal accomplishment.

His weight is another battle. There is a family history of heart problems.

"That's something that we both need to be aware of," said Kyle, who is 5-11 and 225. "We've done our share of joint diets. I'm sure we'll do more in the future."

"Kyle and I," Eric said, "are always competing at everything."

But for now, Eric's obsession is making winners of the Jets, and making time for Julie and their sons whenever he can. There's little time to watch Robert DeNiro movies or listen to U2, Tupac and Crowded House.

"If he fails," Kyle said, "it won't be because he didn't work hard enough or wasn't smart enough."

No, it won't be. But when the Browns hired Belichick in 1991, he was only 39 and the league's youngest head coach. A decade later, he is the only coach to win three Super Bowls in four years.

Sometimes, having a great mentor and working harder and being smarter isn't enough.

Contact Alan Greenberg

at agreenberg@courant.com
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Good Article

MParty7441 Well-Known Member

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Murrell2878 Lets go JETS!
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Good Article

MParty7441 Well-Known Member

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Pam TGG.com Friendliest Poster Fourpeat!!

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