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Mack Brown’s Carolina career ended the way few of us expected.
He wasn’t going to coach forever, but he would step down when he was good and ready. UNC was readier, and it turned sadder than it could have been and should have been.
Brown actually saved Tar Heel football twice in his two tenures in Chapel Hill. He got the job back in 1988 by winning the press conference as a young and relatively unknown coach from Tulane. Under Dick Crum, the program had lost its energy and Mack lit a new spark at his introductory presser.
The late Paul Hoolahan, a rising star in college athletic administration after he was an All-ACC lineman in the Bill Dooley days, said Brown wowed the media and alumni who were present, “That was exciting, the energy he had. I am going to stick around here for a while and see what happens.”
Brown shook off two 1-10 seasons while he recruited relentlessly around the state of North Carolina and produced seven straight bowl teams before Texas lured him away for more money in 1997, leaving a legacy that was never matched – not even by himself.
Brown was succeeded by five different coaches with varying degrees of success, and when the last of five was flaming out Mack was already serving as a consultant to Bubba Cunningham, helping Larry Fedora find a defensive coordinator who could be almost as good as Fedora had been with his high-flying offense. When apathy again engulfed the enterprise, Cunningham made a change and asked Brown to come out of retirement.
After five years with ESPN, the 67-year-old Brown and the wife he had met in Chapel Hill decided to come home. And he did it again in recruiting high school players he knew would come if he could promise a more successful team.
As the reactions vary over how well Brown did, think about how the Tar Heels would have been if he had not flipped natives and long-time fans Sam Howell and Drake Maye from Florida State and Alabama, respectively.
The rub with Brown was that he oversold the program and never fielded a team as good as the last few he had at UNC in the 1990s and his powerhouses at Texas. He seemed to be an eternal optimist who could “fix” anything and everything that went wrong in Mack 2.0.
At 73, with critics crowing that the game had passed him by, Brown wanted teams that matched those of Howell and Maye but in different ways. He had five coordinators in his six seasons, and obviously none of them panned out.
Then NIL and the transfer portal hit college athletics and Brown and UNC never figured it out like some other schools with more money and fewer ethics. When the dust settles, here is hoping he and Sally still call this home.
Featured image via Associated Press/Chris Seward
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.
Classy write up for Mack. Nice job Art!
Ditto!
Well done.
I hope Coach Brown becomes the 2nd best coach we have had.
I fear he will remain the best.
Thanks Coach for everything you gave us, and the way you did it.