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In two days, UNC’s new football NIL program has raised more than $100,000.
Mack Brown is a super salesman as much as he is a Hall of Fame coach. Before introducing his new defensive coordinator this week, he began with an impassioned sales pitch that he hopes will save the future of Carolina football.
The goals he stated for a new “Hold The Line” initiative is to raise $1 million out of the gate and sign up 5,000 donors to give $5 million by year’s end. Will that be enough to make a dent in the NIL landscape that has changed college football more than, Brown says, in his 45 years of coaching?
As of yesterday, his pleading appears to be working on the Heels4Life tally, if not in the court of social media, where Brown is getting his share of criticism. Bloggers and posters are saying that Carolina was late getting into the NIL game, and now that the Tar Heels have lost twice as many players in the transfer portal as gaining them the critics are calling Brown desperate.
When asked about NIL three years ago, he barely responded, citing the NCAA guidelines that athletic department personnel could not be involved or even comment on NIL. Over the last year, the NCAA softened that stance, and Brown has jumped in at events and now in fundraising.
Since Monday, the Heels4Life meter has passed the $100,000 mark. It would be even better if the mega-wealthy Brown came up with a legal way for him and wife Sally to set a monetary example, if they haven’t already.
“We’re asking you as fans today to step up and start being involved with our collective,” Brown said, “and make a difference in this program.”
The urgency seemed like Carolina is on the brink of sinking from a good college program into mediocrity without protecting its roster from poachers.
He quoted his old mentor and former Texas coach Darrell Royal, who told Brown after he took over a losing program in Austin that the “all the BBs have been scattered and your job is to get all the BBs back in the box and get everyone aligned and heading in the right direction.”
“We don’t even talk about Amateurism anymore,” Brown said. “We’re headed toward an NFL model. And we’re in the NFL model right now without guidelines. I look forward to the day that we have guidelines and that we’re more like the NFL and there’s probably gonna be a salary cap. And guys get paid through universities at some point beyond their scholarships.”
He said, “everything we’re doing now is getting everyone aligned.”
Featured image via Associated Press/Nell Redmond
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Congratulations to Mack for raising $100,000 in just 2 days. He’s a great motivator to 70 year-old men. It’s a shame Mack can’t motivate 20 year-olds to beat teams like Virginia (who won a whopping 3 games this past year). But it can be an exciting thing to watch people throw their money at the Titanic, with a captain who goes down with his ship. But Geoff Collins might just turn us around. If Geoff can’t, and after Mack has hired and fired a half dozen more DC’s, maybe Mack can hire Cedric Gray to coach our defense, after Gray has played 10 years in the NFL, as Mack will still be around coming up with more and more excuses about why he can’t win more than 60 percent of his games.