01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 27, 2005

BY TOM E. CURRAN
Journal Sports Writer

It was the kind of bizzare scene from which a person wakes up, laughs, then hesitates to tell anyone for fear of sounding like a whack job.

Two weeks ago, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick is on the TV. It's a Saturday afternoon. He's in the booth at the 18th hole, talking to Jim Nantz at the AT&T National Pro-Am from Pebble Beach, Calif. Nantz asks who's going to replace Romeo Crennel as New England's defensive coordinator. Belichick says the team has that covered. Eric Mangini's going to step in.

Consider the scene again. At one of the planet's greatest golf courses on a weekend afternoon when Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ray Romano, Vijay Singh and Emmitt Smith are on the course, Belichick's in the tower talking about Eric Mangini. Not even in a parallel universe could any of this be seen happening four years ago.

Belichick? At Pebble Beach? On TV? And he's talking about Eric Mangini?

That's 34-year-old Eric Mangini? The Patriots secondary coach for the past five years, 10 years removed from being a public relations gopher for the Cleveland Browns, 12 years removed from playing nose tackle at Wesleyan and 13 years removed from coaching football for the first time to guys twice his age in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, not Florida?

Fletch never dreamed like this.

But it happened like that. And those that know Mangini aren't surprised that he was named Pats defensive coordinator or that he was about the most sought after coaching commodity in the NFL offseason, courted by the Patriots, Browns and Dolphins.

"The game's at a slower speed for Eric," said Rob Ryan, the Oakland Raiders defensive coordinator and a four-year assistant alongside Mangini with the Pats. "He sees things on the field and adjusts things so quickly. His preparation is incredible and he can dissect a team's passing game amazingly. And I've been around a lot of great coaches."

Matt Landolfi, who played at Wesleyan when Mangini was racking up 36 career sacks as a quick but undersized nose tackle, was also asked about the quick rise.

"It doesn't (surprise me)," said Landolfi, a quarterback and defensive back who was a year behind Mangini. "He was very intelligent, very likeable. The guys on our team just loved him and I can see where players would like him even though he's very young. He has a very diverse background growing up and going to (high school) in Hartford. He really grew up in a tougher area and even though he went to Wesleyan, you knew he could relate to people. I could see where Belichick would keep him close."

Mangini hasn't been made available to the media yet in his new capacity, but those who know him well say the groundwork for his rise to the top was laid Down Under.

Still deciding whether to be an investment banker or stay in football in some capacity, Mangini went to the Melbourne University in the spring of his junior year on an exchange program. While there, he got hooked up with some mates playing semi-pro American football.

He couldn't play for them but he was happy to coach the band of primitive but passionate football players. The first team he was helping out with folded, but he was persuaded to help out with another more polished (relatively) club, the Kew Colts.

His head coach at Wesleyan, Burrillville native Frank Hauser, recalled getting off-hours calls from Mangini from Australia and being asked to explain defensive concepts Mangini wasn't familiar with. Hauser would explain them by phone then fax the X's and O's. Mangini would install what they talked about in the next practice, explaining it to a collection of men in their late 20s and early 30s who simply had a love for the game.

Some players -- like a 44-year-old Vietnam vet from the states nicknamed "The Fossil" -- had played real organized football before. Most hadn't.

The Kew Colts won the league title the day before Mangini returned to the United States, beating a team that had won 26 consecutive games before that championship.

"He just wanted to learn and know the game and he had a good mind for it," said Hauser. "Some guys have good minds but don't want to work. He had that and he had the hunger to do it."

His hunger led him to pursue a job with the Browns. Belichick, a Wesleyan graduate, had hired Hauser's predecessor, Kevin Spencer and that was Mangini's in.

"At the end of camp, he would have been sent home, but from dealing with him from a coaching staff standpoint, we were all pretty impressed with his attention to detail and interest in coaching," Belichick told the media during Super Bowl week.

So they kept him. And stocked with his knowledge from the Kew Colts and his own playing experience and a thirst for hard work, his career arc began. From the outside, his rise may seem meteoric. It's not.

"Pro football people don't care how old you are as long as you can do the job," said Ryan. "He's outstanding. He relates with his players and is a great teacher. He's going to be dynamite.

"(Crennel) is a great person and leader but he teaches to be a leader too," added Ryan. "He helped Eric along as much as Belichick has and the team wont miss a beat on defense. I believe that. I'm not saying they won't miss (Crennel) but he groomed (Mangini) for this. And I look for him to keep doing a great job."