Amid multiple reports that Browns coach Eric Mangini has embarked on a fining spree that would make Tom Coughlin blush (or maybe his face is still frozen from the 2007 NFC title game), Mangini stood by his practice of imposing financial penalties on players who don’t follow the rules.
Though he wouldn’t confirm or deny specific reports of a fine in the amount of $1,701 imposed on a player who didn’t pay for a $3 bottle of water at the team hotel, Mangini defended the practice of holding players accountable.
“I won’t talk about the specifics of the fines or who’s involved, but I will say that I don’t like players’ money, but the rules are in place because we have a very diverse group of people, and the rules are set up to make sure we can operate effectively as possible,” Mangini said, per Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “They’re clearly laid out, they’re clearly explained, expectations are explained, and I don’t ask anybody to do anything that anybody else in society isn’t asked to do — that normal, mature people aren’t asked to do.
“When we go to hotels, we have to pay incidentals. We don’t park in handicap spots, we don’t park in firelanes, we don’t park in somebody else’s spot. I don’t think anybody here does and I don’t think that the equipment guy deserves any less respect or the secretary deserves any less respect than anybody else in the organization. They may not play on the field, but they have every right to be respected the same way.
“I believe in that. I believe that people should be mature and approach things in a responsible way. I believe people in the organization should have that respect from everybody. I’m going to keep believing in that. I’m going to keep demanding that we have mature, responsible people as part of the Browns and I make no apologies for that.”
Fine, but as a source told us over the weekend, Mangini needs to learn how to pick his battles. The notion of fining a player $1,701 for drinking a $3 bottle of water and not stopping at the front desk to hand over a handful of quarters for it makes no sense, especially when the incidentals can easily be withheld from the players’ checks.
Mankok is a moron. He’s not trying to hold people accountable, he’s trying to exert his power. There’s a difference.
Mangini – short term results that probably will not produce a SB win\showing
Singletary – gradual to long term results, emphasizing on years of success with a SB showing\win
Mangini is 100% correct in this.
People have responsibilities as well as rights.
Yea! You tell ‘em Florio!
These Belichik proteges are hilarious. I’m pretty sure he intentionally sets them up for failure to make sure they don’t become serious competition. Hey BoyGenius – most people in society that go on business trips and stick their company with a $3 bottle of water are then charged $3 by their company – not $1,701.
I think what Mangini is doing is kinda right. The player stole something that wasnt his. No matter what it was, a car, or in this case, a bottle of water, he deserves to be punished. I believe Mangini is taking the right approach, although I think that $1,701 is very excessive. Players think that they are above the law, and he is trying to bring them back down to earth. If they would of just taken it out of his salary he would of never learned a lesson from it.
Who got fined $1,701 for a $3 bottle of water, anyway?
Are we sure that this actually happened?
Who are the sources for this story, anyway?
You do have more than one source for this, right?
He’s a beady eyed, short, fat piece of human garbage. The free agents who sign in the future will be pathetic. No player with any talent and a minimum of brains would want to play for the Browns while he’s in charge.
Ok, I don’t get a few things: how he got a head coaching job based on his abysmal year as defensive coordinater in New England, how he immediately gets another job after being fired from the Jest, and how or why he thinks this particluar approach is going to work with his team.
Clearly Mangini is hung up on the fact that he is not a football guy, he never played the game, and is caught up in an ego trip in hopes that somehow people will fear him even if they don’t respect him.
It is never going to work, and I see potential that the situation in Cleveland may rapidly deteriorate.
Mangini is right! You must hold everyone accountable.
Maybe the player who was fined $1700 for the bottle of water has done this before, maybe he has made a habit of doing it and an example needed to be set….maybe said player called the girl at the desk a %$#% and refused to pay.
For all the Jets and Patriots: everyone gets it…Jets fans blame Mangini for last years choke show and Pats fans hate him for outing Belicheat.
“Admit multiple reports that Browns coach Eric Mangini has…”
Admit, what?
And when are you guys going to fix the broken login thing?
I just wanna know how it came out to be $1701.
When did it become the team’s responsibility to clean up after their players break the law? They’re not children. The team is not their mommy, wiping their noses and docking their allowance when they break a window. If I stayed at a hotel on a business trip and my boss got a call from them saying I stole something out of the room, I’d probably find myself fired, or at least have a reprimand put in my file. Why can’t we expect the same of all grown men?
The water bottle fine goes back to a non-PFT story that offers proof by stating: “According to a source familiar with the Browns’ internal situation,…”.
Florio does this fequently- no proof of source or proof of claim. How much work did you put in confirming the water bottle fine Florio? A good guess is- little to none because you like the story and the web traffic….
“The player stole something that wasnt his. No matter what it was, a car, or in this case, a bottle of water, he deserves to be punished.”
You are making the assumption that he intentionally did not pay for it. I have been on the road many times on concert tours and it is possible, especially when tired to forget to pay incidentals.
If it had been a bunch of movies, room service etc no excuse. One bottle of water I can see forgetting you had, especially since they are given tons of free water at the stadiums and team facilities and he may not even have realized it wasn’t one of those that he could have brought with him to the hotel.
Even then, fine the guy something appropriate, not 1700 dollars. Does Mangini really think this is going to make players want to go to Cleveland ?
I cant stand this douchebag for the most part BUT he is absolutely right here. By just taking the $3 out of their paychecks is allowing these self entitled babies to continue this disgusting trend of rulebreaking. Even this site tracks the bad behavior of Professional athletes with the “turd” tracker. And the reason you track these spoiled knuckleheads is because you recognize its a growing issue. SO WHY NOW, THAT A COACH IS TAKING A HARDLINE, ARE YOU STICKING UP FOR THESE SPOILED BRATS? I was raised on two basic principles: Respect Women and Dont Take You Didnt Earn. It seems today that these megalomaniacs have problems with both of those principles. Frankly, its bullshit. It seems that somewhere along the way these idiots have managed to seperate themselves from society. The problem with athletes is they seem to think that money leads to power rather than power and success leading to money. And this thinking is what allows these 20 something juveniles to walk around doing whatever the F-ck they want.
Maybe were all wrong and Mangini is the one whos right. Maybe this “say-nothing” baffoon has a chance to turn this flaming crazy train around. Who knows?
While most of us are pretty sick of the players feeling they can do whatever they want, this kind of fine makes people not want to play for the team. As it is theyre never any good. What
Mantits does by acting this way is just make it that much harder for them to sign free agents. The $3 should have just come out of the players check. I guess the thinking is the $1701 for them is like $3 for us so maybe he was trying to get the point across. In any case its petty and no one wants to play for a prison warden.
Maybe if his disciplinary system produced results, then more people would buy into it. As it is, the Browns are on track to easily have one of the worst recrds in fotball at the end of the year.
“Fine, but as a source told us over the weekend, Mangini needs to learn how to pick his battles. The notion of fining a player $1,701 for drinking a $3 bottle of water and not stopping at the front desk to hand over a handful of quarters for it makes no sense, especially when the incidentals can easily be withheld from the players’ checks. ”
How do you still not understand Mangini’s position after writing an entire article on his position?
Have any of you ever traveled for work? I have traveled for dozens of productions and it’s always handled one of two ways 1) you use your own credit card for incidentals OR 2) if everything at the hotel is on the company card, use whatever you want and the amount you spend on the mini bar, room service, movies, etc., gets taken out of your per diem check. How is it TV shows, some that are only around for several months, can manage to do this without any problems and an established NFL team cannot?
With the first pick in the 2010 NFL draft the Cleveland Browns select…
It’s probably just an overreaction to the “Mangina” nickname.
“I won’t talk about the specifics of the fines or who’s involved, but I will say that I don’t like players’ money,…
Get it right, Florio and Cabot, Mangini said, “I don’t like taking players’ money,…”
Not sure why you think these millionaires should simply have the $3 bottle of water deducted from their massive paycheck – they wouldn’t even notice.
Mangini is right, these guys are just like everybody else and should be held accountable. You think they can’t handle the $1701 fine? It’s a drop in the bucket.
I think Mangini is a raging douchebag.
However, this is not one of the reasons. I actually respect his attitude in this a great deal. As for the “outrageous” fine of $1701 for a $3 bottle of water….the number sounds like a set fine for a specific indiscretion (can’t figure out the specific math right now, however, $1701 is divisible by 3 numerous times, all the way down to 7. So they may use a factor to determine the amount of the fine based on the cost of the item STOLEN.)
If you set rules and say “You absolutely cannot do this or you will be punished” and then when someone does exactly that, you excuse it because it was a MINOR violation of the rule, then you actually aren’t setting any type of example whatsoever.
Additionally, $1,700 really isn’t make that major a difference to someone who’s minumum salary is $285,000….it’s like someone making $50,000 paying a fine of $300. Somewhat impactful, but more a nuisance than anything. Which is also a good reminder.
Good thing I do not work for the Browns I have drank gallons of those over priced bottles of water
Have to after a night in the bar
“When did it become the team’s responsibility to clean up after their players break the law?
…
If I stayed at a hotel on a business trip and my boss got a call from them saying I stole something out of the room, I’d probably find myself fired, or at least have a reprimand put in my file. Why can’t we expect the same of all grown men?”
Get a grip pal. The hotels put these minibars in rooms just so they can clip an exorbitant rate. Plus when anyone signs in they agree to pay those charges whether then or later. And it goes on whatever credit card or credit arrangement made by the team. No big deal.
” I’m going to keep believing in that. I’m going to keep demanding that we have mature, responsible people as part of the Browns and I make no apologies for that.”
Yeah, mature, responsible people …. the kind of people who list injured players on an injury report?
This guy is a zero coach who enjoys pushing people around; players, staff, front office, media, you name it. He’s going to have a short career when people universally come to the conclusion that he A) can’t coach worth a damn and B) is a complete asswipe of a person.
Fining a player who makes $700,000 plus a year a stupid $1700 isn’t going to make a damn bit of difference to that player and only serves to make Mangini look like the douchebag he is.
Hey coach, ever hear the saying “Won the battle but lost the war”? Look it up …… get a clue. You’d do a whole lot better to put the guy’s $3 bottle of water on YOU’RE tab.
“Admit multiple reports…”
proofreader. get one.
I’m not a fan of Mangini in the least bit, but I have to agree with him here. There were set rules and the guy broke them by stealing a water. For all of you guys saying this is excessive, that is the point. Maybe next time the player will think twice before stealing a bottle of water.
Yes, people need to be mature and responsible, and that goes for Mangini as well. Yet he seems to be the only person he excludes from this rule. He wants his team to be responsible, then treats them as children. Let me ask you something Mangini. If my business sends me on a trip, and I drink a bottle of water and forget to pay it, what will my business do? One of two things. They will likely ask me for the money or deduct it from my paycheck. They will not charge me over 500% of the cost of the incidentals!
Put it another way. You want your players to be concentrating on an away game. You want them focused on football. What is better, for you to set up an easy pay deduction scheme (even with a $2 processing fee) that the players can take advantage of so they don’t need to worry about such things? Or have them worried about all the petty, yet large, fines you have set up for them when they should be worrying about the game? Your team really needs to be concentrating on football right now, because quite frankly, they suck. All evidence is pointing to you as subtracting from their ability to play football for you, not adding to it. This is why agents are blacklisting your team, because of YOU. You are quickly becoming the coach that players go to to suicide their careers.
Dear New Yorkers,
Even though Mangini seems to stand by the same principles and core beliefs that we do, we will continue to act as though he is an idiot. We realize that most New Yorkers and all Bostonians hate him; therefore, it is in our best interest to bad mouth him on this site.
Given the number of visitors to this site who are either fans of the Jets or Patriots, we are well aware of the repercussions of giving Mankok any credit or praise whatsoever.
Yours Truly,
The PFT Staff
P.S. Can you blieve that douche bag Mangina holds his players accountable for their actions. What a complete jackass.
st.michael says: “Given the number of visitors to this site who are either fans of the Jets or Patriots, we are well aware of the repercussions of giving Mankok any credit or praise whatsoever.”
Praise for what? Cleveland looks like it’s in a race with Detroit for the first pick. You do realize that your team is absolutely awful, don’t you?
This lecture on doing the right thing coming from a man who lied about the injury report and was fined for it and his GM contradicted his denial of wrongdoing is a bit rich.
This kind of stuff is the reason that Jet players were so quick to throw Mangini under the bus and have bought into Rex Ryan so quickly. When you treat NFL players like infants, you are going to find it harder to bring in free agents and retain your current players. There is a reason the NFL’s best coaches (Tomlin, Coughlin, Fisher) don’t do stuff like this. The Belichick coaching tree has yet to embrace the fact that they aren’t him. This act works for Belichick because he has almost a handful of Super Bowl rings as the head man, they don’t. Mangini, Crennel, and Charlie Weis are/were all 2′s masquarading as 1′s and will never work as head coaches in this league.