UNC football coach Mack Brown joined Ron Stutts this morning for “Mondays with Mack,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire. Read his entire interview below:


This is Mondays with Mack, presented by Chapel Hill Tire and Car Care. Coach, awfully good to be with you this morning.

Thank you, Ron. It’s good to be with you. And we appreciate all your hard work through the many years and sad that we will not get to listen to you anymore. This retirement word, that that’s not good for us. Congratulations and enjoy some time doing different things.

You and I go back a long way, because I remember when you first came to Chapel Hill the first time, I remember spending a couple of hours with you at midfield at Kenan Stadium doing the morning show. And you know, I’ve always enjoyed talking to you every opportunity I get.

Thank you, Ron. And Chapel Hill appreciates you. You’ve done so much for this community and in this show, and it’s been a fun two years getting to catch up with you every month.

I appreciate your being back as well, one of the most exciting things that’s happened in this community in a long time. Did you pretty much get what you wanted out of the game on Saturday against Western Carolina? 

We got exactly what we wanted, Ron. We dominated the game early offensively. We were a little soft, I thought early in the game on defense because they came out in different looks and options, and then we’d prepared for it. And I thought the guys adjusted to that well and there’s some things that we can correct, but we played 88 players. We got just about everybody in the game, got them some snaps, some I’m sure are mad they didn’t get more. But that that’s part of Senior Day and trying to get everybody in the right places. But if your program’s improving, you beat a team like Mercer last year and you beat a team like Western Carolina this year, that you were better than and you beat them in a dramatic fashion early, get the game over with and go score. And we scored six out of the first seven drives and we had the one fumble, or we would have scored seven out of seven. So very, very proud of the guys got to evaluate a lot of young guys that will help the morale of the team. And now we got to get ready for a different group in Miami.

Yeah. Back to that in just a moment here, but I know Saturday was special for another reason, the fact that it was Senior Day, you couldn’t do things the way that you normally would have done them, but it had to be really emotional with all those players coming out individually and standing next to you and just a great way to send them off. And I know you’re going to miss all these guys.

Ron, we really are. These guys are special for a lot of different reasons, but since the NCAA would not allow parents to be on the field I thought it was a touch of genius from somebody here, not me, but somebody much brighter than me, that the parents would give a video message to the players. And that was very emotional for them to see their son standing on the field for the last time. It sure broke me up. And then [UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz] and [UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham] were out there to congratulate the young people as well. And these young people came in with [Coach Larry Fedora.] They had different assistant coaches, some of them two or three different assistant coaches. And they really reached out to us and said, whatever you want to do, we want to help you do it. And they’ve put our program in a lot better place now than it was when they got here. So, uh, the University of North Carolina and our fan base sure owes these seniors a lot.

Certainly a stroke of genius on somebody’s part to have the parents be able to provide a message on the big video board.

Yeah. So that was really cool. And I think something that even if the parents could be on the field, that’s something that we might want to do in the future because I’ve never seen that before. And I thought it was a classy touch.

Well, getting back to the game itself, the first time ever that you mentioned it or in the post game, first time ever, not starting your first unit to begin the second half. Explain your line of thinking on that when you decided to play all those.

Well, we had always felt like you, you don’t shut it down at halftime and it’s always dangerous. And [Coach Bobby Bowden] told me one time, I said, why do you, why do you beat people so badly? Why do you keep everybody in so late? He said, we were ahead 34 to nothing at the against Pittsburgh when I was at West Virginia. And we put them all in to start the second half and they came back and beat us 35-34 and I thought I was going to get fired. So nobody thinks you can lose those games. But I just felt like in this situation that we’ve had so many close games for two years, we haven’t been able to play enough young people on the offense that we’ve wanted to and that we needed to. So this was a situation where our defense was playing well enough. I thought we needed to get all the guys out that weren’t “superstars” and didn’t need to get hit anymore for the Miami game. But we needed to go ahead and let the other ones play.

Reflecting on this whole season has been really a strange, bizarre trip. You won’t be able to play in Kenan Stadium anymore, but still there’s a long way to go here. I know you’re not even thinking about a bowl right now because you’re focused on Miami, but not wanting to think too much about that, but it certainly is different this year, knowing that you’re already qualified for a bowl and given some kind of strange circumstance involving the pandemic, it looks like you’re going to be playing somewhere in the state of Florida.

Well, it, it does Ron and we’ve got some good options out there. Obviously if you can win this weekend, that that enhances your options, but that’s what the guys have done that, we have a national TV game against Notre Dame that Chris Fowler or Kirk Herbstreit are coming in here to do. And it excites the nation. And then you come back two weeks later and you got another one that is a national TV game with ABC in prime time. And so our players have put us in a position where people are looking at us differently at the end of the year. Instead of trying to get to a bowl, these guys are trying to enhance their bowl experience and get to a better bowl. And they’re trying to finish strong against a really good team. So I can’t thank them enough for all the effort they’ve put into this and they’re changing who we are is as we sit here and watch.

Okay, you had that big showdown on national TV against Notre Dame and couldn’t quite get it done. Now you take on Miami, another Top-10 team. What does your team have to do in order to win this?

We played such a great first half against Notre Dame, and I was really proud of the guys then defensively. We kept hanging in there until about the last five minutes of the game. They scored with a little over a minute left, I think to put it out of reach, but offensively, we didn’t run the ball or protect as well the second half as we needed to. So in this game, we’ve got to keep our balance on the offense. Our offense has been one of the best in the country this year. We’ve scored a whole lot of points and we need to do that against a great defense. And that’ll be a really good challenge for us on Saturday.

The Tar Heels are not playing at home, but what can the fans do to help you?

All the fans can have their Tar Heel gear on at 3:00, getting ready for that 3:30 game, be pumped, excited, and be screaming at that TV. Like they’d be screaming if they were in the stadium and that’ll help us a lot.

I love it and love what you’re doing too with program. I know I’ve said that before, but I really made it and good luck on Saturday against the hurricane.

Thank you, Ron. It should be an exciting game and a great challenge for us.

Featured image via ACC Media

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