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Mack Brown is changing more than defensive coordinators.
On a day the UNC head football coach introduced Geoff Collins to replace Gene Chizik as the new leader of his beleaguered defense, Brown announced a new fundraising drive to “get on board” with the NIL collective Heels4Life.
For the last three years, Brown has complained more about transfers being offered money and schools “tampering” with players from other programs than he has his own NIL collective and what is needed to even the playing field of NIL.
He insists Carolina is “going to play by the rules” and that the NCAA wants the same thing but acknowledged “there are no rules” because no one is in charge. That’s where the “wild west” invective has been added to recruiting.
Since his program lost more players than it has signed in the transfer portal, Brown is ready to take the next step after not saying much about it in public because the NCAA has relaxed its policy that coaches cannot be involved.
The non-profit Heels4Life has rolled out a new program called “Hold the Line” in which Brown is asking alumni and fans to donate what they can in his stated goal of raising $5 million so the Tar Heels can be more competitive in NIL and “get better players.”
It’s not that the Heels don’t have dozens of very good players, Brown is looking for more depth on both sides of the ball so his team doesn’t fade at the end of the season after starting 9-1 and 6-0.
“We need to finish better,” Brown said. “We’ve got to uncover every little stone and try to figure out how we can get better and how we can finish stronger.”
He praised Chizik and outgoing defensive line coach Tim Cross, but they appear to be the latest scapegoats in football programs, college and pro, where the head coaches need to do something to appease the disgruntled fan base. Collins will be Brown’s third defensive coordinator entering his sixth season. The game has gotten more cutthroat since his first stint at UNC, which began with two 1-10 seasons and wound up in the top ten – all with the same DC, the late Carl Torbush. So more money to get and keep players is the new answer.
“If you’re recruiting the right players and they know that there’s going to be opportunities after they get here, then the ones we want are still gonna come legally,” Brown said. “But if they aren’t going to be in a position where NIL takes proper care of them after they get here, then they’re not gonna come. And that’s what you deal with.”
On the Heels4Life website, Brown says Hold the Line “is a way for those fans to once again prove there is no better place for a student-athlete than Chapel Hill.”
In other words, money talks so nobody walks.
Featured image via Associated Press/Jeff Siner
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So how much of his own salary is he willing to contribute?
The NIL is a great thing for Mack, for 2 reasons: Either he can get people to buy the best of the best players (and he can then turn them into less than mediocre players), or he can blame the UNC fans/boosters for not ponying enough cash to bring great players to Chapel Hill (which is just another excuse in a long line of excuses why he can’t win more than 60 percent of his games). I keep hearing about Mack’s last 2 teams collapsing. What about the three prior to that?
In the final 5 games in the last 5 seasons, Mack is 11 and 14, not good but respectable. But look at who some of the teams are that he beat down the stretch, while losing practically EVERY GAME where he was a slight favorite or a slight underdog.
Here are some of these 11 wins: Mercer, Temple, Wofford, Western Carolina, Campbell, and Wake Forest (3 times), DEFINITELY NOT POWERHOUSE football programs. So other than those 8 wins, he’s ONLY WON 3 GAMES AND LOST 14! That is TERRIBLE, but NOBODY SEEMS TO CARE! He will continue to lose, make his lame excuses, reboot, lose again, draft another excuse, and Bubba will give him a contract extension. Maybe it’s time for someone higher up than Mack to go?
Mack has always been a great salesman/recruiter, but those days might just be coming to an end, as the players (so far) coming in on the transfer portal are not nearly as good (on paper) aa players transferring out and transferring to State, Duke, etc.
But as Robin once asked Batman: “Holy Excuse, Batman! What was that I almost stepped in?”
Batman: “I don’t know but I hear Mack Brown sure can shovel it!”
UNC is going to “play by the rules”?????
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mack Brown needs too retire.