For Jets, Ex-Apprentices Now Piloting the Franchise
Jets General Manager Mike Tannenbaum, 36, chats with injured running back Curtis Martin, center, and team owner Woody Johnson, right.
(By Ed Betz -- Associated Press)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Tuesday, September 5, 2006
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. -- In the fall of 1994, Eric Mangini and Mike Tannenbaum, armed with prestigious college degrees and mountains of student debt, put their educations to good use running a copy machine in the old Cleveland Browns offices. They did this because they loved football and, being short of any ability to make the NFL as players, realized their only way in was from the bottom.
"Once I got my foot in the door, they were not going to kick me out," Tannenbaum would say years later.
They did not know each other despite the fact they grew up less than two hours apart -- Mangini in Hartford, Conn., and Tannenbaum outside of Boston. But once they converged upon that copy machine, they were destined to be friends, they were so much alike. And as the blue light flashed and the copies piled up in trays, they talked late into the night; two interns lost in the tedium of their tasks, fantasizing about the day they would run a football team of their own.
The machine was called "the Queen Mary."
How could they know just how soon it would propel them to their dream?
Twelve years later they do have a team of their own -- the New York Jets -- and they operate it at an age when most men are only starting to build their names in the league. Mangini, 35, the head coach, is the youngest man currently holding such a position in the NFL. Tannenbaum, 36, is the general manager. In an NFL that puts a high price on dedication, lineage and many years of apprenticeship, having two men in their mid-thirties in charge of a team is not only unusual, it's almost unheard of.
Not that either of them sounds excited about the situation.
"Whether we're trailblazers or not, it's more about taking the opportunity and making the most of it and putting the best Jet team on the field," Tannenbaum said.
"I'd rather be the young guy than described as the old guy," Mangini said.
This is the way of the youngest management team in the NFL. Despite their sterling pedigrees (Mangini has a degree in political science from Wesleyan and Tannenbaum graduated from Tulane's law school) they were raised at the feet of Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells, two coaches who demanded ingenuity, perfection and little communication with the outside world. Talking openly meant revealing snippets of information and eventually those snippets of information could add up to bigger pieces that might make their way to other teams and could be used against them in a game.
In Parcells and Belichick's world, secrecy means winning. And nothing in that universe can be allowed to get in the way of winning.
Which, in part, is probably why Tannenbaum and Mangini are here at such young ages. While in the employ of Parcells and Belichick, they worked hard, brought good ideas and kept out of the public eye. They rarely spoke to reporters, never did television interviews or signed autographs. They just stayed in the office and worked until Tannenbaum was negotiating nearly all of the Jets' contracts as assistant general manager and Mangini was Belichick's defensive coordinator in New England.
