The anti-Mangino crowd on the Gridiron Board has a pretty good sustained campaign/effort going on now that we're into the true off-season. The latest evidence that Mark Mangino is laying waste to the program is back-to-back shutouts from the NFL draft. Evidently, this indicates that the coach can't recruit and we have minimal talent on the field. If that's true, then we're going to have to give the coach a lot of credit for training and gameday as he's probably overachieved by getting bowl eligible in three of the past four seasons.
I disagree on the recruiting aspect though. Maybe we have some undersized players or some guys that aren't quite 4.4 speed -- in other words, players that don't fit into the NFL beauty pageant mold. Hey, when I'm going into the Big 12 wars, I'll take Nick Reid, Charlton Keith, Aqib Talib and Charles Gordon over a Stewart Bradley any day (I would like an Adam Carriker though). I dislike re-stating the obvious, but Mangino stepped into a program that was rock bottom. This is being built from the ground up and the growth, the change in attitude is clear to anyone that survived the previous era. In relative terms both 2005 and 2006 were disappointing years in that both teams looked like eight plus game winners on paper. The underachievement is frustrating for the fans, but I can sense it from the coaches and players as well. No one can argue that we are a competitive team now. Despite OSU's second half romp, most teams that come into Memorial Stadium get a full 60-minute war. With a few coaching changes and a little more experience and depth at QB and secondary, the pieces are there. The next step is an attitude amongst the players that every game is theirs. A lot of these guys were new starters last year and hopefully they learned that if you don't take it, it will get taken from you.
We were 7-5 in 2005 and 6-6 in 2006 and no one is happy with that. That's a good thing. We should be rabid for the start of the '07 season.