Mack Brown had more on his mind than losing a football game.

When he came on his weekly 11 a.m. Zoom press conference Monday, Brown opened with the story about Ohio State head coach Ryan Day whose father had committed suicide at 31, leaving a son to later learn his dad had battled depression most of his life.

It was not only Mental Health Week around college football, but UNC had declared Tuesday a Wellness Day, calling off classes after two suicides and one attempted suicide recently occurred on the Carolina campus.

“It’s the second-leading cause of death for young people between 15 and 34,” Brown said. “It’s out there way too much. Our sport is really important but people’s lives are much more important.”

Since returning to Chapel Hill, Mack and Sally Brown have been leaders in the battle for children’s health, both physical and mental.

Mack mentioned the well-documented story of his former player Jake Lawler, who had kept his secret of childhood depression and suicidal thoughts away from his family, away from everyone except his roommate Michael Carter, now the star rookie running back with the New York Jets. Then in 2019, Lawler heard his new head coach speak.

“It’s something I’d been dealing with long before I stepped foot on campus, but truthfully I never felt comfortable opening up to anybody,” Lawler said this week from Los Angeles, where he is a burgeoning young screenwriter.

“When Coach Brown came, the first meeting we had was very honest and introspective about who he is as a person and a coach. And the first thing that he told all of us was we want our players to be happy; it doesn’t matter what you do on the field, more so, it matters how good of a person you are and how safe and secure you feel. And that was something I had never heard before in the sports I played.”

After confidential meetings with Brown and his wife, Lawler was referred to Dr. Jeni Shannon, director of sports psychology at UNC. Lawler decided to tweet out his story, which was shared among media nationwide and led to more than a thousand direct messages.

“The major breakthrough was telling people,” Lawler said. “I got so many DMs who wanted to tell their stories. The most impactful, most visceral moment was really posting the article myself.

“I wasn’t a very good football player,” he continued, “but Mack and Sally and Dr. Shannon saved my life.”

 

Photo via Matthew Fedder/Carolina Football.

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