The Mangini Road Trip

This past weekend, Cleveland Browns rookies were asked to take a road trip by head coach Eric Mangini — a 10-hour bus trip — to work his charity football camp in Hartford, Conn. It’s a story that’s continuing to drive national sports news. Today, I hope to make it clear that as a rookie you don’t have many options — whether it’s fair or not.

Hitting the Road

Look, I think we can all agree that taking a 10-hour bus ride is no fun. Brutal might be a better word to describe it.

But that’s exactly what the Browns’ rookies did last weekend when they were asked by Mangini to go to a “voluntary” football camp — and we all know what “voluntary” means as an NFL rookie. Basically, get your butt on the bus if you want to be on my team.

Is it fair? Is it right? Absolutely not, folks. But if you’re a rookie, you don’t have an opinion, you don’t have a voice and you definitely don’t have a lot of choices when the head coach asks you to work at a charity football camp.

Now, I don’t know if there were no available seats on a plane, or if Mangini was just trying to see how his rookies would react (more likely the latter), but I can tell you that’s just how it is for a rookie at this level.

And it really isn’t up to the media to decide if this was the right thing to do because it is, in fact, Mangini’s football team.

And because of that, if I’m one of those Browns rookies, I shut my mouth, get on the bus and do what the boss says — if I want to play for that team. No, it’s probably not the best way to treat a young player trying to make a living playing football, but do we really feel sorry for these rookies because they had to make take a bus trip at the “request” of the head coach?

I don’t, and I’m going to tell you why.

The Rookie

As a rookie in this league — especially when you haven’t even made the team — it’s best to just do what you’re told.

During my first season in St. Louis, my rookie counterparts and I did a multiple of charity events that summer in which fans came out, asked where Marshall Faulk was and tried to figure out if I was a player or a member of the team’s marketing department. Sure, I got tired of it about 10 minutes into my first event, but they did serve a purpose to the community, and I was a rookie — what was I going to say?

“I don’t want to do it”?

Right, and I’m sure the first thing coach Mike Martz would have heard was how one of his rookies who was trying to make the team refused to do something he was asked. I can tell you this, my journalism degree from Iowa would have been put to use pretty quickly while I put together my resume after the Rams saw a rookie making his own rules.

Unfortunately, that’s just how it is for rookies, and these young players in Cleveland haven’t even been through their first training camp practice — where it will get a lot worse.

I don’t know what Mangini was thinking chartering a bus and making his rookies settle in for 20 hours on the road, and this story will continue to draw national attention. People will talk about “hazing” and all of that other nonsense — which they have every right to do.

But Mangini is the boss, and the rookies in Cleveland are just going to have to get used to that — if they want to make that team.

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