You say Mangini, I say Mangino... Let's call the whole thing off

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In five of Eric Mangini's nine losses as Browns coach, they've scored six or fewer points. Joe Robbins/Getty Images

I don't know if you have ever done it, but for a long time it seemed like everyone had at least once or twice said "Jack Nicholson" when they meant "Jack Nicklaus" and vice versa. It seems weird if you think about it... yes, the names are similar, but it's hard to imagine that Nicklaus and Nicholson often share a similar context. Nicholson isn't winning Masters. Nicklaus isn't winning Oscars. But the strangeness of having two people that famous with similar names seemed more than many of us could handle. Eddie Murray and Eddie Murphy shared a similar connection.

Now, though, you have two football coaches -- both seemingly on the brink of being fired, both rather large, both abrasive in their own ways -- and what chance do we have not confusing Eric Mangini and Mark Mangino? Just in the last two weeks I've probably called Mangino-Mangini and Mangini-Mangino two dozen times. What a weird deal to have two men with almost identical names in the news at the same time for virtually the same reason. It's a lot like that Hollywood thing where two movies about destroying an oncoming meteor or two books about Pistol Pete (or for that matter two books in large part about the 1975 Cincinnati Reds) coming out at the same time. I guess the only thing you can take out of it is that it really is a big world, with billions of possibilities. And with billions of possibilities, coincidences happen.*

*When playing Strat-o-Matic baseball, we used to have a saying: "Twenties happen." In Strat-o, you would sometimes find yourself in a situation where a guy would score on 1-19 -- meaning that on a 20-sided die, if you rolled anything from 1-19, the runner would score. Usually, your opponent would not even throw home in such situations, but sometimes he would. And sometimes, every so often (I'd estimate, oh, about 5 percent of the time) you would roll the 20, meaning the runner was out at the plate. And you would feel cheated by life. You'd shout "That's not realistic!" But in baseball, like in life, twenties do indeed happen.

I don't have much to add to the Eric Mangini chorus. A few weeks ago, I expanded on my fanbole that Mangini was the worst coaching hire in 25 years. And even though people angrily wrote in to defend the reputations of other dreadful coaching hires like Ray Handley, Jim Zorn, Art Shell, Tom Cable, Marty Mornhinweg and many others, I think that at the end of the day I probably will be right. I take no joy in that, really. It is remarkable, if you think about it, that in only 10 games as coach of the Cleveland Browns, Mangini has managed to:

1. Lose nine times -- his team's only victory coming in what I suppose is the worst game of the year, a 6-3 victory over Buffalo. In five of the nine losses, the Browns scored six or fewer points. In five of the nine losses, the Browns gave up 30 or more points. The Browns have gained the fewest yards, given up the third most, allowed 21 first downs by penalty (second most), and their quarterbacks have seven touchdown passes and 15 interceptions -- which, improbably, is even worse than Carolina's Jake Delhomme.

2. Play some sort of weird role in both the hiring and quick firing of former Browns GM George Kokinis. We are told that Kokinis is/was one of Mangini's best friends.

3. Turn the Browns' quarterback mess into a full-fledged circus complete with a whole new kind of "Guess who is going to be quarterback" intrigue (Who will start this week? Check in next time, same Browns time, same Brown channel!).

4. Do all sorts of comical things like fine a player $1,701 for failing to pay for a $3 water bottle in a hotel room -- while getting fined $25,000 himself for leaving Brett Favre off the injury report last year. He also just charged Detroit Lions coach Jim Schwartz of having his players fake injuries so they could deal with the Browns vaunted no-huddle attack, which would be hysterically funny if it wasn't just so sad. After all this is the guy who turned in Bill Belichick.

And we don't even want to get back into the whole painting-over-the-mural controversy.*

*Still waiting for the Browns to put that mural back up on a new wall in their training facility. Yep. Still waiting. Maybe they're just planning to unveil it around a big celebration.

Mangini has gone on a national tour trying to revive his image, and I respect that. The stories emerging are of a good family man who is just trying to do the best he can. I do not doubt these stories at all. But I don't think anyone said he was a bad family man who is lying in the back room and having people drop grapes into his mouth. No, the point seems to be that he's a complete disaster as a head football coach, and I think that with only moderate research this would have been obvious BEFORE the Browns hired him. Of course, now there are rumors leaking out that the Browns might be interested in giving Charlie Weis some role, so apparently the geniuses are still meeting behind closed doors in Cleveland.

Mark Mangino's story sounds similar -- but I think it's actually quite different. Mangino is the football coach at Kansas and this year the Jayhawks are playing lousy football. They had lost six in a row coming into Saturday's game against Missouri. And during those six losses the school has started an internal investigation into allegations that Mangino has bullied his players. I guess it began with the report that Mangino poked one of his players in the chest and it sort of mushroomed from there. Numerous people have jumped up to throw new charges at Mangino or to defend him. I know, football coaches bullying players barely seems worth mentioning, but the theme seems to be that there was a pattern of serious abuse here. Some of the examples that have emerged -- that Mangino allegedly told one player that he would become an alcoholic like his father and another that if he didn't shape up he would get sent back to the neighborhood where his brother got shot -- are disturbing.

This is not completely out of the blue, of course. Several stories have emerged in recent years that suggest Mangino is not a teddy bear. There was the YouTube of Mangino going nutso on Raimond Pendleton after a penalty. You watch that... and you get a pretty good sense of what style of coaching we're talking about here.

Still, beyond the few glimpses, he's a hard man to know. He doesn't give away much. I suppose you can't write anything honest about Mangino without at least mentioning the weight issue... I suspect that few men in America had been made fun of for his weight more than Mark Mangino. Think of it: Every stadium, every sports talk radio station, every Internet site constantly mocking you for a personal battle that you obviously cannot win. I remember the hurt in my brother's eyes when he weighed more than 400 pounds. But maybe there was a lot more going on behind the scenes. I don't really know.