Feeling overshadowed.

I love college basketball. Not as much as college football, but enough to continue paying 2/3 of the cable bill for another four months while allowing my roommate to enjoy the cable as much as I do.

And there's part of me that loves this time of year more than any other -- it's dark out pretty much all the time, you're completely justified to change into your pajamas at 7 p.m. and watch whatever sports are on TV, and there's no shortage of sports at all whatsoever.

But I can't help feeling that right about now, up until the bowl season, college football sort of falls by the wayside a little bit.

For example, this evening there was apparently a pretty decent game on between Oklahoma State and Colorado, of all things. The fact that the #12 team in the country nearly lost to Colorado is reason enough for me to stand up and take notice. Except I was at the old folks' home watching a college basketball game instead, and it was so good I totally forgot there might be a good football game on.

So I stand ready to hold football in your faces until it's over.

You know why?

When it's gone, and the long sport-desolate months of April through August stretch before you, you'll look back on these halcyon days and say, 'Thank God Sheila alerted me to the big fight happening in Kansas over that hugely fat coach.'

So let's hop to it.

Everyone's favorite giant, Mark Mangino (seriously I feel bad for the fans of this team, because he's a good coach but there is no way he's going to make it another five years the way he's going) is being accused of some coaching indiscretions at the University of Kansas, where he's made some headway in a quest to stop the Jayhawks from being just a basketball school. Here's what they say at ESPN.com:

Kansas athletic director Lew Perkins has launched an investigation into Mangino allegedly grabbing, yelling at and putting his finger in the chest of senior linebacker Arist Wright, who had been laughing during a walkthrough or practice prior to the Colorado game on Oct. 17, two people briefed on the situation told ESPN's Joe Schad on Tuesday night.

Since then, several former Kansas players come forward with allegations of verbal abuse.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, maybe I'm just used to private schools. But I personally see very little wrong with this. Verbal abuse? Seriously? You're college football players. I'm pretty sure your whole adulthood has been based on verbal abuse. I remember exactly two coaches from HIGH SCHOOL who didn't verbally abuse us.

I guess I'm not saying it's right, but I certainly don't think a coach yelling at you because you aren't paying attention, even grabbing you, is unacceptable. It would be unacceptable if he were, say, punching you in the face.

I'm sort of on Team Mangino here. And I'm proud to be in the company of this little man, who I'm guessing is also on Team Mangino.



Wow, even as I write this I discover that I do not know the whole story. Let's check out this magic from www.deadspin.com.

Some (alleged) highlights:

"One day, [Mangino] said in front of the entire team, 'Are you going to be a lawyer or do you want to become an alcoholic like your Dad?'"

When confronting a KU player who had received a "minor in possession" ticket, Mangino told him "You'll be drinking out of a brown paper bag the rest of (your) life." Brown, who had a brother that was once shot in the arm, says that Mangino once said to him, "If you don't shut up, I'm going to send you back to St. Louis so you can get shot with your homies."

Lovely. Still, not sure this is anything worse than what you'd expect on most college football fields. And as Deadspin points out, all this comes out when the team is sucking, as opposed to last season, when they were 12-1.

So for the moment, I'd like to go back to Baby Mangino.



Feeling better already.