Bill Belichick tried to give Eric Mangini’s coaching career to Craig Carton

Long before Craig Carton was hosting your favorite sports TV show, Bill Belichick tried to jumpstart a career that could have made him the head coach of your favorite NFL team.

Ask Belichick about Carton today and the University of North Carolina coach will tell you he’s never heard of him. But ask Belichick about the sports host 30 years ago back when they were both working in Cleveland, and Carton claims he would say they were besties.

Eric Mangini is filling in for Danny Parkins alongside Carton and Mark Schlereth this week on FS1’s Breakfast Ball. And on Monday morning, Carton basically took credit for Mangini’s NFL coaching career, claiming he turned down an offer to join Belichick’s staff back when he was a sports radio host in Cleveland. Carton has told this story before, but this was the first time he was telling it directly to Mangini.

“1993, I’m on the radio in Cleveland, Ohio at a place called 3WE (WWWE)…and my best friend in Cleveland is a guy named Bill Belichick,” Carton said. “He comes to me one day and he goes look, ‘I think you have the makings of what could be a good coach…I want to offer you a job.’ Now I’m on the radio making $30,000 a year and I have a possibility of going to Philadelphia and making $50,000 and staying in radio.”

Carton said the initial offer was an unpaid internship with the Browns, but Belichick promised to match his $30,000 salary within six months.

“I turned the job down to continue my radio career and I go to Philadelphia,” Carton recalled. “Bill Belichick pivots. And since I said no, he had to find an unpaid intern. That unpaid intern was a young man named Eric Mangini! And that’s how he got his coaching start. If I had said yes to the offer, he’s not the head coach of the New York Jets.”

“Coach, you’re welcome,” Carton told Mangini.

Carton’s former radio partner, Boomer Esiason once asked Belichick about his supposed good buddy from Cleveland. Belichick allegedly responded with, “I never heard of Craig.” WFAN, however, did previously unearth old audio of Carton and Belichick getting chummy on-air in Cleveland, making it clear they had at least some form of a friendship.

Could that friendship have led to Carton eventually riding Belichick’s coattails all the way to becoming head coach of the New York Jets? It might devalue what Mangini accomplished as an NFL head coach, but Carton believes he turned that opportunity down in favor of his sports media career.