Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler.
Mack Brown is nothing if not long and optimistic.
The Carolina football coach owns the unofficial record for the number of off-preseason press conferences he holds and the duration of each presser. His confab before the spring game ran 43 minutes, typical. You almost can’t go if you have anything else to do. And there’s always YouTube.
Approaching his 72nd birthday, Brown never fails to be this chipper in prepping for a new season. The Tar Heels’ theme for spring practice is to “finish” and that is clearly something the head coach cannot do any better than his 2022 team that lost its last four.
The multi-fanged college sports media in this state joke about how much time Brown spends with them, and they appreciate that he stays around to answer every last question. No other coach does all that, and Brown seems to like it as a CEO coach who oversees his program more than getting in the trenches.
His Tuesday presser this week had very little about the Spring Game Saturday, which is free, in Kenan Stadium at 3 o’clock, because it is more one last look at individual players than any semblance of a game. Until a few weeks ago, Brown was ruminating about not having it all.
He takes questions about anything and everything else, and many of them asked are what Brown has already answered repeatedly.
No matter what his Tar Heels did the season before or are expected to do the coming fall, Brown always is positive about their chances. He can riff on stats about last season but prefers talking up the players who will start or see a lot of snaps.
Entering his fifth fall back in Chapel Hill, in his four seasons so far, Mack has had a future NFL quarterback to talk about, Sam Howell for three of them and Drake Maye entering his second but third year in school (which makes him eligible for the 2024 NFL draft).
It’s about getting better and consistent play to surround QB1 and less about a defense that takes a lot of heat each autumn. But in 2023, Maye has the least-experienced wide receiving corps in Brown’s return.
Brown begins each press conference with a “Welcome, Everybody!” And he ends it with an “Anything else?” and stays at the podium to make sure. “This time last year we were having this same discussion,” Mack said Tuesday. Not exactly but it took just as long.
Featured image via UNC Football/Matthew Fedder
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 biweekly newsletter.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
