Imagine spending forty-plus years working the sidelines of the NFL team you grew up watching every Sunday on an old TV set as a kid in small-town Mississippi. Kevin Mangum, the New Orleans Saints assistant athletic trainer and Southern Miss Alumnus, has lived that dream for 42 years, to be exact patching up New Orleans Saints’ greats and nursing them back to health.
This past year in October of 2022, Mangum received the 2022 Joe Gemelli “Fleur De Lis Award” at the 33rd annual Saints Hall of Fame Luncheon. The award is given annually to someone who has contributed to the betterment of the New Orleans Saints organization.
On the training staff, Mangum’s role serves to rehabilitate injured players and assist in preventative treatments.
“Kevin’s dedicated, trustworthy, hard-working to a fault, loyal, and taking on responsibility over and above what’s on his game plan. That’s what he was every year that we worked together, and he continues to be that way,” said Dean Kleinschmidt, former Saints head athletic trainer and Joe Gemelli award recipient.
Long before his 42 years in the organization, Mangum devoted his free time to learning about the profession. While in high school, Mangun’s passion led him to drive almost two hours from his hometown to the old Saints faculty on Thanksgiving mornings to shadow his mentor Kleinschmidt and experience the athletic trainer’s day-to-day operations.
“I decided in the ninth grade that I wanted to be an athletic trainer. I had to know more about it and reached out to Dean Kleinschmidt. I would drive in every Thanksgiving break here in New Orleans and watch what went on in the training room and the practice field. It was a great opportunity to learn as I went,” said Mangum.
Mangum’s unique drive first came to the surface after an ankle injury while playing defensive back in his freshman year of high school. In his school training room, his inquisitive mind began to pick the brain of the athletic trainer who nursed him back to health. Little did he know this would lead to a career of success that would bring life back full circle for him.
After numerous questions on treatment, Kevin received a book entitled Modern Principles of Athletic Training that the athletic trainer handed to him, and from that point on, Kevin would not look back. “I said, ‘What am I doing this for? What does this do?’ He said, ‘Read the book and find out.’” Mangum said.
“I said, ‘You know, this is really interesting, and I think this is what I want to do.’ That’s when it all got started,” Mangum said. “Thank goodness he pulled that book off the shelf. It was a start of a good career for me.”
Before enrolling at USM, Mangum went the extra mile traveling east on highway 98, seeking as much knowledge as possible.
“I even drove up to Southern Miss while still in high school to take a class on the taping of athletic injuries. I would drive two nights a week before I enrolled there. The relationships and bonds I formed with those people were fundamental to my growth,” Mangum said.
Southern Miss athletic trainers Jim Gillespie and Larry “Doc” Herrington would mentor Mangum at his time at Southern Miss, who were legendary in the school’s athletic training program. Herrington became the first-ever athletic trainer inducted into the Mississippi Hall of Fame.
“Just working with him at Southern Miss was a special moment,” said Mangum. “Him taking me to work the Senior Bowl for two years and getting that week to spend in Mobile with players from all over was a huge learning experience.”
Mangum called it unbelievable to watch and work with Southern Miss legends Reggie Collier and Sammy Winder in the early 80s before graduating from Southern Mississippi in 1981. Mangum earned a master’s degree in physical education from the University of New Orleans in 1988.
Even while a student trainer at Southern Miss, Mangum would go to the big league. Mangum was patching up Golden Eagles on Saturdays and Saints on Sundays.
“He’d also come on Sundays from his alma mater of Southern Miss to the Superdome and helped us prepare the team on Sunday morning for the game. Those things are not in the bio but should be,” said Kleinschmidt.
Being one of the organization’s longest-tenured employees, Mangum worked for eight head coaches while mending the organization’s players to hit the gridiron as fast as possible.
In 2009, Mangum helped keep the Saints healthy en route to their first-ever 13-0 start, the longest undefeated streak by an NFC team since the NFL merger. From a wide-eyed kid who loved the Saints and was eager to assist in athletics, Kevin’s dreams would finally come true as the New Orleans Saints won their first-ever Super Bowl on February 7, 2010.
“It’s been amazing. I’m sitting here with this Super Bowl ring on, the things that have happened over the years. The people you have met, the players you’ve been able to work with, and the places you have been able to go,” Mangum said. “Working with so many good people and elite athletes is an amazing opportunity. It doesn’t get any better.”
Being a part of numerous games over 42 years, Mangum recalls one of his fondest memories being the “Rebirth Game.” In 2006 the Saints played their first home game in the Superdome on September 26, 13 months after Hurricane Katrina heavily damaged the stadium and city. Mangum remembered the electricity of the fans and the release of emotion from everyone that night with the unforgettable Steve Gleason’s blocked punt that set the game’s tone leading to the Saints defeating the Atlanta Falcons 23-3.
“That game was all that and more it doesn’t get any better than that, “said Mangum.
Nursing countless athletes back in his tenure, he sums up that there’s not one player he could single out because there are numerous guys’ stories who are unique and that worked so hard to step back between those white hashes of green grass.
January 1981 is where it began for Mangum right after college when newly hired head coach Bum Phillips demanded trainer Dean Kleinschmidt add someone else to the training staff. Phillips put Kleinschmidt on the clock, he had just the guy in mind to draft, ready to go the extra mile for the team he grew up watching on TV.
“I said Bum; I got the guy. I know exactly who I want. So I made one call, and he offered and accepted in the spring of 81′ he (Mangum) was full-time, ” said Kleinschmidt.
Mangum thanked Kleinschmidt numerous times for taking a chance on the recent graduate allowing him to take on the big leagues.
“They were very open to me. People are open to those who want to learn,” Mangum said. “Athletics trainers are educators and students, so they are very open to those who want to learn and know the profession. ”
During his time with the Saints athletic training staff, he received the NFL Athletic Training Staff of the Year in 1986 and 2006, Southeastern Athletic Trainers’ Association Professional Athletic Trainers Award in 2007, and the Fain Cain Memorial Award in 2006 for their long-term commitment to the NFL and exemplary performances.
After 42 years, it’s evident Mangum could write volumes on the countless games and characters that he’s known from his long and prosperous career, but none of them tops his very own.
From a small-town kid from Tylertown, Mississippi, to college football games at Southern Miss to being on the sidelines of NFL football games for over forty years, Mangum’s dreams became a reality by letting curiosity get the best of him at 15 years old in dingy high school training room.
“It’s like my friend “Hokie” Gajan [Howard Gajan Jr] once said, ‘It’s like traveling down a road and you notice a turtle sitting on top of a fence post, one thing you know for sure he didn’t get there by himself,’” said Mangum.
Photos Courtesy of the New Orleans Saints/Chuck Cook/The University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
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