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Thirty years ago, it was a different Carolina-State rivalry.
The Tar Heels lost their first five games under Mack Brown from 1988 through 1992. The Wolfpack had it going with the late Dick Sheridan, who had the highest winning percentage (.637) of any State coach in the last 50 years.
UNC finally broke through in 1993 with a 35-14 win in Raleigh. It marked the first of seven consecutive victories over the Pack, during which Brown departed for Texas.
After that game, linebackers coach Donnie Thompson body-slammed State assistant Ted Cain while exchanging words coming off the field. Brown was already in the locker room but has seen videos of Thompson bear-hugging Cain and depositing him on the turf. He laughs about it now.
Heading into the 113th renewal Saturday night on the same field, Brown has other worries about what assistant coaches and players are doing between games in this high stakes free agency era of college sports. He says he tries to make it part of regular communication with his staff.
“I’ve told them, I don’t mind you talking to other people about jobs,” Brown said this week. “I just wanna know it. If you surprise me, then I feel like you’re a liar and deceitful. If you wanna leave, I need to start looking at who I’m gonna replace you with. It’s like recruiting. If you’re gonna date, then I’m gonna date.”
Last year, offensive coordinator Phil Longo surprised Brown when he suddenly left for Wisconsin. The next day, Brown was in the car on a recruiting visit with offensive line coach Jack Bicknell. “I said, ‘I guess you’re leaving too’.”
As quickly as possible, Brown replaced Longo with Chip Lindsey and Bicknell with Randy Clements. Wisconsin is currently 6-5, 4-4 in the Big Ten with the seventh-best offense in the 14-team conference. Carolina is first in most ACC offensive categories.
A similar bidding war has been going on with players since the inception of NIL payments three years ago. UNC is raising money under its NIL collective Heels4Life, which Brown says is doing it the right way by explaining its program to recruits and potential transfers and not just offering them money up front. Brown says it goes on in the middle of the season, which he calls tampering.
“The ones that you all know about are all asking for money.” He said, “and that’s a problem. We don’t have much money, right? So that’s why we got our transfers from Kent State and East Tennessee State and Coastal Carolina. That’s just what we’ve had to do because we can’t afford some of the ones now at other schools.”
That sounds incongruous for a program that has invested multi-millions in facilities and coaching salaries since Brown returned in 2019. NIL at UNC has fallen behind because some of the richer schools have done it outside of the spirit intended.
Brown said he tells players, “Don’t go through spring practice if you think you’re leaving; don’t act like you’re gonna stay and then we can’t replace you.
“If we can’t pay you that much through the collective, then you go, but if you don’t tell us, we’ve got no chance and you’re killing us in recruiting. That’s kind of what happened at linebacker. We lost three and we’re still fighting to get back” to the needed depth in that position.
Featured image: Eli Melet
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