How lucky are we to have coaches like Mack Brown?

For 11 straight years, WCHL has had a sweepstakes sending lucky UNC fans to a special destination where the football or basketball teams are playing games in the upcoming season.

It began in 2011, with a Take Us To Vegas contest to watch Roy Williams’ top-ranked team play in the Continental Tire Invitational in Sin City. Since then, we have sent winners back to Las Vegas twice, to the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, to Maui and Atlantis and back to the Bahamas, to Brooklyn and New Orleans and Chicago. Have I left somewhere out?

Last year, with all the excitement around Carolina football, the trip was to South Bend for the Notre Dame thriller under the Golden Dome. This year, it’s to Boone for the sold-out App State game.

Except when COVID kept people out of public places, we have held the grand-prize drawing party at one of the sponsors with standing-room-only crowds, largely because Roy Williams and now Mack Brown have come to help us pick the winners.

Monday night, the party was held at the Casual Pint on Elliott Road where 80 weekly winners showed up, 20 semifinalists were picked out of a drum and, by the time Mack arrived between meetings at the Kenan Football Center, we were down to two finalists.

Brown had fun drawing the grand door prize winner of an autographed football and then popped the balloon to determine who was getting a Labor Day weekend for two in the mountains and those impossible tickets to the game at Kidd Brewer stadium in Boone.

As Mack talked with Aaron Keck about the 2022 team and season, I thought as I do every year how lucky we are to have community-oriented coaches like Brown and Williams who are willing to come out to meet the Chapel Hill and Carrboro fans for a “cheap” thrill since no one gets paid and there’s no admission fee.

Wonder if Nick Saban does something like that in Tuscaloosa or whether the recently retired Coach K did that at Duke.

I don’t think so, and it’s nothing against them as much as it is something about having Carolina coaches who can take the time to stop by and make a good event great.

Thanks again, coaches!


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