Mark Mangino wants us all to lighten up

Kansas coach Mark Mangino, who worked with Texas Tech coach Mike Leach as a fellow assistant on the 1999 Oklahoma staff, said he thinks Leach was just trying to have fun when he said Saturday night that the Red Raiders must have listened to their "fat little girlfriends" before their 52-30 loss to Texas A&M.

"I don't want to get into all of that. There's pretty girls everywhere," Mangino said. "Tech's got their share, and KU has their share. We're partial. We think KU has the best. I think you can have fun with it. That's what Mike's trying to do. He's trying to have fun with it."

Then, in possibly one of the most ironic sound bites in the history of college football, Mangino indicated that he thinks we should all let our hair down a bit.

"We're really uptight in society," Mangino said. "We're really politically correct. I love watching Joe Paterno's press conferences. We watch them on tape. I think they're the best. He is the king of college football. He can say anything he wants, and I love it. He's earned the right to do that. I sit there and I say, 'Jeez, if I said something like that, I'd have to apologize.' We need a little bit of that. We're too uptight in this society. We need to loosen up and have some fun and not everybody take everything so literally. I don't want to get into the girls. We'll leave that to Mike. I'll focus on football. I got my hands full doing that."

When pressed again about whether he talks to his team about the possibility of girlfriends distracting them, Mangino hesitated and then said:

"This here is a democracy, to a point. But the cutoff line ... we don't talk to players about who their girlfriend should be, what they should look like, all that. I’m telling you, our coaches aren’t sititng up here until 10:30, 11 o' clock at night worried about our players' girlfriends. That’s their business."