Texas Tech Coach Hammers Mangini

Hope Mike Leach has his facts straight.

The Texas Tech head coach ripped into Cleveland Browns head coach Eric Mangini during a conference call Saturday. The source of Leach's irritation? A report out of Cleveland that the Browns considered Crabtree to be a prima donna during his predraft visit with the Browns.

Whether Mangini spread that word - or even believed Crabtree to be a diva - hasn't been publicly established. But Leach seems pretty sure of it.

Of Mangini, Leach said, "How about that guy? There's a bunch of things that I've heard that guy described as that I might start sharing publicly. Let's just put it this way: Michael Crabtree has been more successful as a receiver than that guy's been as a coach up to this point, so I think we'll just go ahead at the end and let the record speak for itself.

"There's no diva in it. Part of that is that he's too shy to do that. He's got some people around him that want to share in his experience and share in this moment for him and stuff like that, but then when all that's over, Michael knows that it's a whole lot of time in the film room by himself or with a few selected people. A whole lot of time in the weight room or on the field, and that's personified by what he's doing here and so any divas out there - we'll just see how they do this season."

After a few other questions, Leach was led back to Mangini. And he took another bite.

"He took it upon himself to figure that in a few minutes he had all the expertise on the subject of Michael Crabtree that he needed," said Leach. "And so we'll see how those non-divas up there in Cleveland do this year. Here's the other thing: what's interesting to me, a guy that really has not accomplished a great deal there at Cleveland or the Jets for that matter to publicly comment on a) someone he doesn't even know and b) someone who's accomplishments speak for themselves and, within the specific field that Michael Crabtree's in, Michael's accomplishments speak louder than Mangini's do."

Leach went on to say how shy and self-effacing Crabtree is and how he'd scurry away when national media outlets came to interview him. Apparently, he got over that shyness since he was a feature player in the draft-u-mentary "Path To The Draft" on NFL Network, counseled by the diva whisperer himself, Deion Sanders.