Paul Alexander's Camp isn't Eric Mangini's "Magic Bus Ride"

PFT's Mike Florio has issue with Bengals offensive line coach, who is a co-director for a youth football camp in Bloomington, Illinois and asking rookies to attend the camp to help. Florio writes that "it’s no different than Browns coach Eric Mangini’s magic bus to Hartford," because, as he references a Randy Kindred piece, “Alexander has made it a tradition for Bengals rookies to work the camp.”

The problem with the wording is that not all Bengals rookies are asked to attend. It's just rookies on the offensive line, as evident that Kindred's piece references only Andre Smith and Jonathan Luigs. In fact, if Florio reads the next sentence in Kindred's piece, he'll see that "every lineman to eventually play for him in Cincinnati has come to Bloomington as a rookie." Now, this is a problem? Now, we're comparing this to the "Mangini magic bus"? Technically, yea, it is different. Only two Bengals rookies attended. Furthermore, the bus ride was went ten boring hours. Luigs and Smith drove across one state (technically across two state lines... Ohio/Indiana and Indiana/Illinois). Furthermore, look at the quotes by unnamed sources regarding the story on Mangini.

• "It’s a sophisticated form of hazing."
• "It’s voluntary, [but] it’s B.S. voluntary,"
• "That’s f–ked up."

So let's recap. It wasn't a 10-hour bus ride. It wasn't all of the rookies -- just Alexander's rookies. And let's be honest, wouldn't we, and everyone else in the world, rather have Smith hanging out with Alexander than doing nothing before signing his rookie contract? So as Officer Barbrady says, "Move along folks, nothing to see here."