“To be frank, I think his world had vanished long before he ever entered it. But I will say, he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace.”
-F. Murray Abraham as “Zero,” from the film “The Grand Budapest Hotel”
Sunday, December 1 was Mack Brown’s last official day as a UNC employee. Brown enjoyed a dinner with members of the football program’s Senior Class of 2024, just 24 hours after his curtain call along the Kenan Stadium sidelines.
The now-former UNC head coach took some time after the 35-30 loss to NC State – his fourth in a row to the rival Wolfpack – to publicize his version of the events of the past week, one which saw him fired for the first time in his career. Despite reports the Hall of Famer was unwilling to leave his post, on Saturday evening Brown told a different story.
“I agree with the administration that we need a change of leadership at the top,” Brown said. “I just wanted it to happen after the season was over. These poor kids have had so much turmoil in their lives. I think the administration’s into finding a football coach, and I’m into saving lives.”
According to Brown, the UNC administration asked him to announce his retirement the Monday before the NC State game. Brown refused. It then asked him if he’d prefer to make the announcement on Friday, 24 hours before kickoff. He again said no, which led to Tuesday’s firing and Saturday’s awkward atmosphere inside a mostly-full Kenan.
It was clear to all in attendance at his final press conference that Brown was disappointed at reports during the week he found to be inaccurate. The outgoing coach said the negotiations during his exit involved only a few people.
“There were three people that talked about this: me and John Preyer, chairman of the Board of Trustees, and athletics director [Bubba] Cunningham,” Brown said. “I never talked to the chancellor. Didn’t have one conversation with him. All I wanted to do was wait until the end of the year.”
Unfortunately for Brown, the new realities of college football require a program going through a coaching change to expedite the process as much as possible. The next window of the transfer portal opens on December 9, with multiple Tar Heels already rumored to be entering. Installing the next head coach as quickly as possible to lock down the roster – and kicking out the old coach with the same speed – is mandatory.
This was not the case in the old world of college football, one in which a program with the stature of Alabama could wait more than a month after firing its head coach to hire Nick Saban in 2007. Back then, the Tide were content to hold fast until Saban’s NFL duties with the Miami Dolphins had concluded before officially inking the deal. When Saban retired 17 years later, Alabama waited all of two days to hire Washington’s Kalen DeBoer.
The explosion of the portal, NIL payments and revenue sharing just in the last half-decade have made college football a foreign landscape to those who swore by the old ways. That includes the 73-year-old Brown.
“It’s a great time for me to get out,” he said. “This isn’t the game that I signed up for.”
In effect, Brown got one season in his second stint in Chapel Hill he would’ve recognized beforehand: his first, in 2019. After that, COVID struck, lawsuits were filed and the game changed forever.
His final season on the sidelines contained all those challenges and then some. A four-game losing streak in the middle of the season seems almost trivial when compared to the real-world tragedy of Tylee Craft’s death in October, or the alarming health issues of offensive line coach Randy Clements in August, or the serious leg injury to quarterback Max Johnson in Week 1 which required multiple surgeries.
Even the optimistic Brown, who adamantly said he was sticking around when asked during every offseason, had to throw in the towel.
“I’m not mad. I’m not angry. I think it’s time to go,” he said. “I always said for God to tell me when it’s time to go. And oh my gosh, this year I’ve gotten a bunch of answers.”
Featured image via Associated Press/Chris Seward
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