College Football | Jayhawks' Mangino earns coach of year

LAWRENCE, Kan. — It began as a friendly basketball game in Mark Mangino's old neighborhood of New Castle, Pa. One of Mangino's teammates kept making mistakes. Finally, Mangino threw up his hands and let the kid have it.

Those leadership skills 40 years later would steer surprising Kansas into national-championship contention and help him become The Associated Press Coach of the Year.

"Mark ran the kid off the court, out of the building and into the street," recalled lifelong friend Tom Tommelleo. "Mark's always been a coach. We just didn't know it then. He would study every sport we played and see things the rest of us couldn't see. The thing that lit his fuse the most was somebody not giving his best effort."

In his sixth season with Kansas, Mangino has gotten an exceptional effort from the Jayhawks. Long-woeful Kansas won a school-record 11 games, had two All-Americans and earned a spot in the Bowl Championship Series for the first time. The Jayhawks will play Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl, their first major bowl since 1969.

In voting by AP college-football poll voters, Mangino received 28 of a possible 58 votes, easily outdistancing Missouri's Gary Pinkel, who had 11. Hawaii's June Jones was third (seven votes) and Illinois coach Ron Zook fourth (five votes).

"That's awesome for Coach," Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing said. "He's earned all the recognition he gets. I don't think anybody realizes how hard Coach works for us."

Mangino is the first Kansas coach to win the award since the AP started handing it out in 1998 and the third Big 12 coach, joining Oklahoma's Bob Stoops (2000) and Kansas State's Bill Snyder (1998). Stoops and Mangino were both assistants for Snyder in the 1990s.

Notes

• Arizona State linebacker Morris Wooten will not play in the Holiday Bowl because of an unspecified team rules violation, coach Dennis Erickson said. Wooten is the team's sixth-leading tackler.

• Florida State coach Bobby Bowden called off an afternoon practice to meet with his players, about two dozen of whom are expected to be suspended for the Music City Bowl for involvement in an academic cheating scandal.

• Rich Rodriguez started his new job by watching Michigan practice, while terms of his $4 million buyout at West Virginia were unresolved.

• A misdemeanor battery charge against Florida defensive end Jermaine Cunningham was dropped, two weeks after he was arrested for allegedly hitting a restaurant worker with a sandwich and cups. Charges against former Louisiana State track star Xavier Carter and former Gators linebacker Jon Demps were still pending.

• Former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne, 70, has agreed to remain athletic director until 2010. Osborne returned to the university as interim athletic director Oct. 16, the day after Steve Pederson was fired.

• South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier hired Atlanta Falcons linebackers coach Brian VanGorder as defensive coordinator.

• Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy hired Tennessee receivers coach Trooper Taylor to be the Cowboys' co-offensive coordinator.

• Tennessee reserve linebacker Shane Reveiz, son of former NFL kicker Fuad Reveiz, will need surgery to treat a heart condition.

• Rutgers associate coach Darren Rizzi has been hired as head coach at Rhode Island.

• The Big Ten will begin annual background checks on its football and basketball officials in response to a report about the checkered legal and financial record of one of its football officials.