The game at Boston College, not the loss as much as the manner, has turned the Carolina football season around again, and what once looked like pulling a rabbit out of a hat is more a dead bunny.
The Tar Heels were ill-prepared and badly outplayed by a team that now has the same record (6-5 and 3-4) but far from the controversy that will return to engulf Mack Brown’s program.
Brown, perhaps ill-advisedly, told some people last week that he plans to keep coaching next season. If his 16th team at UNC has not worn out his welcome, that greeting is pretty much under review. And the only thing that will keep sentiment from steamrolling against him is winning Saturday against N.C. State, which has the following circumstances in its favor.
- A bowl bid is at stake for the 5-6 Wolfpack.
- State will be going for its fourth consecutive win over its archrival and its second straight in Kenan Stadium.
- Despite holding a 2-5 ACC record coming in, the Pack has played better competition in losing its last two games to bowl-bound Georgia Tech and Duke than has UNC in beating 2-9 Florida State and 4-7 Wake Forest before being drubbed by BC 41-21 (which was 41-7 with 2:00 left to play).
- And of the opposing former reserve quarterbacks for the two teams, State’s true freshman C.J. Bailey is playing better football than Jacolby Criswell over the last two weeks. After their one-point loss at Georgia Tech Thursday night, Bailey brazenly predicted a win over the Tar Heels.
Of course, the Tar Heels could turn most of those incentives around to keep State from going bowling when Carolina is eligible, end the losing streak to the Pack and getting better play of late from Criswell, his offensive line and the defense — which also reversed its improvement in Boston compared to the last month.
Before the Tar Heels scored two late touchdowns, their only points came from a 95-yard kickoff return by sophomore Chris Culliver, a third-string special teamer playing because Nate McCollum and Darwin Barlow were injured.
The Eagles celebrated the 40th anniversary of their fifth-ranked 1984 team that beat Miami on a Hail Mary pass from Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie to Gerard Phalen, the combo that joined the ceremony after the first quarter. If it sounds like BC has more football tradition than UNC, it does with a program on the rebound under 55-year-old “hometown” head coach Bill O’Brien.
Upon taking a 10-0 lead, BC had run 26 plays from scrimmage to Carolina’s 5. At halftime, the lead had ballooned to 24-7 with Culliver’s gem producing the Heels’ only points. And it would remain that way until those two late touchdowns by freshman Davion Gause. By that time, star running back Omarion Hampton had already retired after 53 yards on 11 carries against BC’s primed defense.
UNC’s Omarion Hampton was bottled up vs. Boston College on Saturday in a way rarely seen during his three-year star turn leading the Tar Heels. (Photo via UNC Athletic Communications.)
Brown was typically matter of fact after the game, saying, “We’ll watch it on the plane going home, get together Sunday, try to figure out what we did wrong and do better next week.”
Though Brown remains personally popular with alumni and fan base at UNC, the rest of the football world rates it as a misery index. The USA Today story by Dan Wolken has the headline “North Carolina faces Mack Brown problem if the coach won’t leave.”
“Brown is apparently going to run the same play he did 11 years ago when it was obvious to everyone but him that it was over at Texas. Instead of bowing out gracefully and handing off to the next generation, Brown is going to force North Carolina to fire him,” Wolken writes.
It actually may be more complicated now than it was at Texas, which had millions to buy him out at 62 years old. Brown joined ESPN for five seasons until he saw a need for UNC to take him back and fix a floundering program under Larry Fedora. His actual buyout at Carolina is less than $4 million, but both parties want a happy ending in which Brown and his wife Sally can continue living in Chapel Hill, where Mack could perhaps take a fundraising job that might help the university out of a serious NIL conundrum that is affecting the overall athletic program.
Brown has already shifted his role so that he is more than a football coach. Wolken writes, “At 73 years old, Brown still thinks he is the best person on Planet Earth to be the head football coach at North Carolina. He is wrong, of course, incredibly wrong. Embarrassingly wrong, as Saturday’s loss to Boston College showed.”
It is hard to believe that another coach — perhaps younger and more in tune with the contemporary game — cannot do a better job than Brown’s coordinators Chip Lindsey and Geoff Collins, who both make a million dollars a year. Lindsey’s offense, which was held to 212 yards at BC, did not convert a third or fourth down until early in the second half and never solved the plan to stop Hampton. Collins’ defense reverted to its bad performances against better teams, allowing 9 of 20 conversions on third and fourth down and giving up 422 total yards.
The millions Brown has wrangled out of Bubba Cunningham and the university trustees to upgrade the football facilities is becoming as irrelevant as UNC’s on-again-off-again talk about building a new half-billion-dollar basketball arena. All that now matters less than how good the teams that play in those stadiums and arenas actually are — and NIL has replaced recruiting to the brand as top priority in signing the best athletes.
Wolken’s harshest words still speak truth: “Old men clinging to power, even when all the evidence suggests they should hand it off and spend the rest of their days enjoying the spoils of a life’s work, is a tale as old as time. Brown, sadly, is no exception.”
The debate ebbs and flows with every victory and defeat, because that is still the name of the game. As he had at UNC in his first stint, and certainly at Texas during his national championship run, Brown keeps a relatively small list of powerful people on his side. Cunningham, on the other hand, must answer to a larger (though less influential) group of donors who want results for their money. Brown has moved the needle just enough in his last six seasons to keep both sides from merging.
A much-needed win over N.C. State and in the bowl game to follow will likely keep Brown in his job. But if the team fails to show up once again and suffers a fourth straight loss to the Wolfpack, it could be a victory in the long run.
Featured image via Todd Melet
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
The effects of the blue pill (remember The Matrix?) sure didn’t last long did they? A win against a broken Florida State team along with wins over very mediocre Virginia and Wake Forest had many UNC fans believing a corner had been turned. Sorry but reality always wins and the reality is that nothing has really changed as far as UNC football”s problems and shortcomings are concerned. The BC loss proved that. Mack Brown 2.0 asserted UNC would compete for championships and would be regarded nationally. Look at the news articles from 2018 when he was rehired. How’d that work out? He hasn’t delivered and even a win against NC State won’t change that. Brown could step down gracefully but reports say no he won’t. Wolken was right.
To True UNC Fans (i.e. not the rich good old boys):
Quit going to the games and let your voices be heard that Uncle Mack needs to go!
I keep hearing UNC media folks say that we just had a bad day or that a bad decision or two cost us.
They are right! It was a bad day and a TERRIBLE decision the day Mack was hired!
Do people not realize that he can NEVER win a game that means anything?
I know: He won one National Championship and (only) two conference championships at Texas decades ago!
All the people that were thrilled that we beat a bad Virginia team, a TERRIBLE Florida State team, and a bad (and getting worse) Wake Forest team need to wake up. We’ve beaten TWO TEAMS WITH WINNING RECORDS: NCCU and Minnesota (who is 6 & 5).
Mack lulls donors to sleep and steals their money, and they are ignorant for giving it to him!
He lulls the fans to sleep with poor on-field performances, but he does spit and take little notes better than any other (“Hall Of Fame”) coach. Hall of Fame? Amazing!
And the worst part is that he lulls his players to sleep because he has no energy and there’s NO ENERGY at all in the UNC football program, and there won’t be any as long as he’s there!
But he says he’s coming back and probably will, because he has no boss but has a lot of rich friends!
I see a parallel between the decline of UNC football under Brown, and the inability of the DC political establishment to see reality, rather than engage in pretending that everything is alright in the nation.
Both events, the one at UNC football, and the one in DC, hold in common a “Great Pretending.”
Brown has run up a record of beating small time opponents, and losing, big, to teams that were better than UNC.
His bowl record, since 2020 is four losses, some by blowouts.
His regular season record at UNC since, 2019 is just barely over .500.
Brown is a mirage who is a great PR guy, who has managed to convicne UNC leaders that UNC owes Brown something.
UNC owes Brown nothing.
It is time to stop the great pretending at UNC.
To Be Rather than to Seem.
Laurie, I would agree with you that the UNC PTB seem to treat Mack in the same manner that they viewed Roy, and I don’t understand why. Roy in a UNC alum who restored UNC basketball back to its place atop the ACC and Nationally; won 3 National Championships (and 5 Final Fours at UNC) and multiple ACC Tournament titles (3x) and Regular Season titles (9x). He absolutely earned the right to leave on his own terms. Mack, on the other hand, up and left for Texas during his first stint in Chapel Hill just when he started to get the Heels recognition on a national level. His best years were clearly at Texas. In the current landscape of college athletics – and for the foreseeable future – football is king. It pays the bills. If UNC wants to continue to be among the top-tier of school brands nationally, football can’t be an afterthought. UNC football is desperately in need of a shot of youth and toughness via a new coaching regime. Who that ends up being, only time will tell. But I do know that things are not going to improve with 73-year-old Mack Brown leading the way. There’s a reason all of his peers (in age) have retired. Several former UNC Football lettermen have gone so far to say that every time UNC takes the field with this current coaching staff, they’re at an automatic disadvantage. If that’s not telling, I don’t know what is.
esse quam videri