Mangini finally gives Browns, fans reason to believe

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Every now and then, a sports leader will do something that reaffirms your faith in sports leaders. And when that happens, it would be appropriate to offer that man a salute of gratitude.

Even if his name is Eric Mangini.

And the truth is, I want to like Mangini. No, really, I do.

He doesn't always do it in the most likeable way, but Mangini stands for things that make my cold heart go pitter-patter. See there? I just wrote an adorable little phrase like pitter-patter. I'm thawing already, and it's because of the way Mangini handled Braylon Edwards -- although "handled" might be the wrong verb. Mangini handled Edwards in much the same way a cryonics worker in Scottsdale, Ariz., allegedly handled Ted Williams' frozen, decapitated head.

By smacking it with a monkey wrench.

That's what Mangini did to Edwards. He smacked him with a metaphorical monkey wrench by shipping him away to the Jets less than 48 hours after Edwards was accused of punching a much smaller man outside a Cleveland club. Maybe Edwards is innocent, or maybe he was provoked. Probably not, but it's possible. Whatever the case, Mangini didn't wait for the police or the court system to determine what happened. Mangini decided he'd had enough nonsense from Braylon Edwards, so he sent him away to become someone else's problem.

This is why I want to love Mangini. It's why we should all want to love him. Buffalo makes a multi-millionaire of Terrell Owens and the 49ers make nice with Michael Crabtree and the Detroit Tigers let Miguel Cabrera play hours after he gets into a drunken altercation with his wife, and enough is enough. We all long for someone in the sports world to treat misbehaving athletes like the spoiled brats they are, and Mangini just did it.

But I don't love Mangini. Neither do you. And that's because his alligator mouth is backed up by a hummingbird ass. If Mike Tomlin or Tom Coughlin or, yes, Bill Belichick was fining one of his players $1,700 for failing to reimburse a hotel for a $3 bottle of water from the room refrigerator, we wouldn't hate it. Not as much as we hated it when Mangini did that to an unidentified Cleveland Brown earlier this season. If it's done by Tomlin or Coughlin or Belichick -- Super Bowl rings among them: five -- we'd call it tough love. It'd be respectable. And we'd like it.

But when the tough guy is Mangini -- playoff wins: zero -- it's not tough love. It's petty and bullying. It's not respectable. It's ridiculous, and we hate it.

And we're not wrong to hate it. Mangini is exceptional at demanding respect, but he hasn't been as adept at earning it. That includes mine, an aside that matters only in that I wrote this story on Mangini 10 days ago, and now I'm writing this salute of gratitude today, and perhaps it will come across to some of you as inconsistent.

The point remains from 10 days ago. Mangini's players don't seem to like him, as evidenced by the way they've used the NFL's grievance system to go after their head coach at least five different times -- and probably more than that, since that count of five grievances was reported almost two weeks ago. Surely in two weeks Mangini has ticked off another player, possibly more, with a fine for forgetting to recycle a Gatorade bottle or for wearing mismatched shower shoes through the locker room. My original point from 10 days ago remains: Mangini's methodology doesn't seem to be endearing him with his players.

But this time, it should.

Jettisoning Braylon Edwards should win over some of the locker room, if only for a day or two. Edwards was a malcontent, and worse than that, he was an underperforming malcontent whose high salary cap number was accounting for precious cap space unworthy of his miniscule production and malingering work habits. He was bringing the team down, in other words. On and off the field.

Mangini sent a message to the locker room that rules are rules, and that no one who shirks the rules can feel safe. That's a welcome message for any workplace, even one as immature and self-centered as an NFL locker room. Like Browns return man Joshua Cribbs told me a few weeks ago in Cleveland, "Players want discipline. We need it."

Players can be like kids. They want attention from their coaches/parents, even if it means a spanking. In their heart of hearts, they know being spanked is better than being ignored, and the Browns have already had a coach who ignored them. Romeo Crennel was a players' coach in that he didn't much care what his players did. Talk to the media or don't. Dress appropriately or don't. Take the hotel's bottle of water or get in a fight outside a club. Or don't. Crennel didn't care. Some might see that attitude as being nice, and he is. Romeo Crennel is a nice, nice man. But his niceness came across as laziness, and lazy leadership is no leadership. The Browns loved Crennel so much that they lost their last six games for him in 2008, averaging 5.2 points and going scoreless in the final two.

Crennel went one way with discipline. Mangini, clearly, is going the other. He fines players who do small things wrong and he just traded away a former first-round pick who did a big thing wrong.

The other stuff needs work. I said it 10 days ago and I'll say it again. The secretive depth chart, the militant fines, the public smugness ... it needs work. Mangini has holes in his game, and if he doesn't fix them during his second go-around as an NFL head coach, there won't be a third.

Cleveland players are desperate for a reason to believe in their coach. Cleveland fans are desperate for a reason, too.

Mangini just gave them one.