Column: an Offer Mangini Couldn't Refuse

In this photo provided by HBO, New York Jets head coach Eric Mangini and his wife, Julie, are shown in a fictional restaurant on the set of HBO's "The Sopranos" that aired Sunday night, June 3, 2007. (AP Photo/HBO) (Craig Blankenhorn - AP)

-- As if NFL commissioner Roger Goodell didn't have enough wayward players to worry about, Jets coach Eric Mangini was caught on camera in a New Jersey restaurant last week meeting a known mob boss who has wagered large sums of money on his team.

Fishy, no?

Yet a call to league headquarters Thursday to find out how Goodell planned to deal with Mangini generated this kind of response:

Fuhgedaboutit.

Before going any further, let's clear up a few things.

That was indeed Mangini and his wife, Julie, on HBO last Sunday night dining out, and the plates of food set out in front of them were real, too. Everybody and everything else, from Tony Soprano to the restaurant itself, the Nuovo Vesuvio, was fictional.

After a cameo on "Sesame Street" last year, Mangini decided to add some dramatic bona fides to his resume by playing himself on last Sunday night's episode of "The Sopranos." That's one of the show's rules. Lauren Bacall, Ben Kingsley, Nancy Sinatra and Lawrence Taylor all went along. So did Mangini.

And so in the next-to-last show of the long-running series, the Jets coach is glimpsed dining at a restaurant owned by Soprano's childhood friend, Artie Bucco.

At one point, Bucco ventures over to the table where Soprano and his wife, Carmella, are sitting.

"Tone, you know who's in tonight?" Bucco asks, before mangling the answer to his own question. "Man-genius."

Soprano has to explain to Carmella who Mangini is.

"It's the Jets coach, sweetie," he says. "I should go say hello."