Tuesday, September 19, 2006

The Belichick-Mangini Handshake

Much has been made of the fact that Patriots coach Bill Belichick barely acknowledged his Jets counterpart Eric Mangini after the Patriots-Jets game on Sunday. Mangini was once a close friend with Belichick, but that personal relationship cooled even as Mangini remained one of Belichick's trusted lieutenants and rose to become the Patriots' defensive coordinator last season. Belichick had a great line to address the alleged snub. Saying it was not a big deal, he asked the assembled throng of sportswriters dying to create a story out of nothing to ``Let me know the next time you see two coaches kiss out there at midfield."


I love Bill Belichick.

10 comments:

dcat said...

Sorry, but I'll need some evidence of the lack of class about which you speak. Are you really familiar enough about their personal relationship that you can speak to the incident on Sunday? Do you really know what went down that made the two, whose families used to spend a lot of time together at a beach house in the offseason, part ways as friends? Is it really classless that Belichick would have such a falling out but would not only keep Mangini on staff but would promote him to defensive coordinator, the very promotion that guaranteed him a head coaching job? I'm curious, Rich, about this omniscience of yours into details of their personal relationship. Or do you have other examples of Belichick not having class? Basically, you are passing judgment on the guy for one moment at the end of a game that for most coaches is perfunctory and using that as evidence for a larger classlessness. Or perhaps there has been a rampant rush on coaches kissing after the game at midfield and both belichick and I have missed it. The media was trying to create an issue where none existed. Asserting anything about either man's character based on that brief interaction is a level of jackassery that I would not expect from anyone, not to mention someone who is a fan of the Bengals, a team so classy it almost had to hold its training camp at the supermax prison in Youngstown in order to field a full team.

dcat

Thunderstick said...

DCat--his argument is that class doesn't come with success. You can't use the Bengals as a model. THey've had no success (unless making the playoffs last year qualifies as succes which in the case of the Bengals it might given their sorry history as a franchise).

But his argument is correct--class doesn't always comes with success--see Maurice Clarett.

Thunderstick said...

The toast of college football after he led Ohio State to an upset of a thought to be unbeatable Miami team and millions of dollars in his immediate future doesn't qualify as success in your book? I'd love to know what you accomplished in your college career.

dcat said...

But again, wat are the roots of those sour grapes? And are they really sour grapes? Do we really know Belichick's mood about Mangini leaving? The year before Belichick Lost Weis and Crennell with no alleged sour grapes, so why with Mangini? there is a lot more to this story than either party has acknowledged.
as for changing the security codes, I'd want to know the precise chronology, but i cannot imagine there is a coach in the NFL who, upon hearing that one of his coaches was going to a division rival, wouldn't grow very circumspect about that person being anywhere near the facility. that has nothing to do with issues of class and everything to do with the NFL's institutional sense of paranoia and of taking itself way too seriously.
Thunderstick is right that with success does not come class, but using Belichick as your example of that is simply a crap argument.
Who cares if you care "how people view" the arrests from the past year. The issue is "class," whatever you mean by that -- you raised it, as you might reecall. You are a fan of the Bengals. You decided that Belichick's handshake this weekend somehow embodied a lack of class. I'd submit that the Bengals having a bunch of guys on the crime blotter is, by a factor of several dozen, far more indicative of a lack of organizational class than anything Belichick might or might not have done. Or maybe you think that sex crimes are more classy than a tepid handshake. In which case the Cincitucky Bengals certainly represent the apogee of class in pro sports. If they were any classier they'd be an episode of Oz. Or as one wit put it: "Bengals intrigued by size of local murderer."

dcat

dcat said...

Actually, Holmes was pretty good -- not Clarett good, but pretty good. I still have the clipping somewhere from when he set the Ohio Wesleyan single game record for rushing. I think it was 205 yards. Of course not a week later a teammate broke that record, but still, he had it, and it is still surely a top five performance in school history. Ads someone holding on like grim death to his top ten performances in all of his track events at his college, I will not denigrate his career.
Of course on a couple of weekends I went up there for his games and I am pretty certain that our display those nights surpassed anything that went on on the field that day, but that is a story for another time and another venue.

dcat

Anonymous said...

You know, Belichick listens to gangsta music in his SUV really loud with the windows down.

I also have it on good authority that he doesn't raise the seat on the toilet when he urinates in the locker room. Evidently, it makes quite a mess.

dcat said...

He also hates kittens.

dcat

AtriaBooks said...

Belichick sells drugs to little kids. (Parcells tought him how)

dcat said...

But he does so like a champion, and the kids respect that.

dcat

dcat said...

Dmax --
Were mangini's taking the Jets position the origins of their personal conflict I might agree with you. But my understanding is that they actually cooled considerably earlier -- thet the personal relationship effectively had ended even as Mangini was promoted within the Pats system and that the chilliness has simply maintained. Yes, Belichick did not think Mangini was ready, but I believe that he gave Mangini positive reviews anyway.
These facts might be in dispute -- but from what i have read they sum up the chronology of the relationship cooling off with reasonable accuracy.

Cheers --
dcat