Former Kansas running back Jocques Crawford believes Jayhawks football coach Mark Mangino has anger issues and is prone to unleash his abusive behavior on his players.
Crawford says he witnessed Mangino’s wrath first hand during his lone season with the program in 2008. Kansas athletic director Lew Perkins launched an investigation into his head coach’s behavior Monday after it came to his attention that Mangino had poked senior linebacker Arist Wright during a walk-through practice last Friday.
Perkins has formed an independent panel to begin investigating what is believed to be a pattern of abusive behavior by Mangino directed at his team and other football personnel. Crawford said Perkins has yet to contact him, but if he does the former running back will have plenty say.
“From what I heard, that’s been going on for a while,” Crawford told FanHouse. “I was warned that’s how he was but I never believed it until I had my encounter with him during two-a-days.”
During that encounter, not long after the Junior College All-American out of Cisco Junior College joined the team in the summer of 2008, Crawford said he was having fumble troubles on a particular day early in fall two-a-days camp when Mangino came down with a mean-spirited attack in front of not only his teammates but some NFL scouts observing practice.
“Mangino grabbed me and started cursing me out and he said I’m the biggest flop that he’d ever seen since some player he named that I had never heard of,” Crawford said. “I was like, ‘Is that necessary? Are you serious right now?’
“Any guy that’s playing college football, they see scouts out there, they are trying to get noticed. So for him to pull me out in front of everybody. … He didn’t pull me to side or nothing, he stopped practice and called me the biggest flop that he’d ever seen.”
Crawford said he felt the wrath once again during the Iowa State game when he was stripped of the football at the bottom of the pile. Crawford insisted he was already down when the ball was taken from him, but the replays were inconclusive and the Cyclones were rewarded the ball.
“Mangino cursed me out on the sideline and told me that I would never play again,” said Crawford, who ran for 232 yards and four touchdowns on 62 attempts in his only season at Kansas. “He sat me down and I did not get back in the rest of that game. That hurt me. You mean to tell me that one mistake was going to cause me to sit on the bench the rest of the game and as you can see from my stats, pretty much the rest of the year?.
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“I had told [offensive coordinator Ed Warinner] it wasn’t fun for me no more and that I’d just rather go somewhere where I could play. I just wanted to play. I wasn’t on any special teams, they had me at second string running back and the first string and third team running backs were …
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