Holding Court: A Preseason Conversation With Mack Brown

 

 

A Preseason Conversation With Mack Brown

By David Glenn

 

North Carolina football coach Mack Brown, who will turn 73 years old on Tuesday, is already a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. In his career, he’s earned Atlantic Coast Conference coach of the year, the Big 12 Conference coach of the year, and the national coach of the year awards. He led the Tar Heels to back-to-back national top-10 finishes in 1996 and 1997 before ending his first stint as UNC’s head coach. Carolina’s 1997 team, which went 11-1 and finished #4 in the coaches’ poll, is regarded among the best in school history.

Away from the Tar Heels, Brown won the 2005 national championship and had amazing success while leading the Texas Longhorns. Now in the sixth season of his second tenure in Chapel Hill, the head coach has led the Heels to five straight bowl games and consistent national Top 25 rankings. With the January retirement of legendary Alabama coach Nick Saban, and Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh returning to the National Football League, there are only three active head coaches with one or more national titles at the Football Bowl Subdivision level: Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, and Brown.

While Brown remains a key face in the sport, college football’s landscape continues shifting — and there are more unknowns around his program this season than in recent years. The 2024 Tar Heels, who were picked by ACC media to finish eighth in the newly expanded, 17-team conference, and are not in the preseason AP Top 25 poll. Carolina will begin their season Aug. 29, when they visit Minnesota and will hold their home opener Sep. 7 against Charlotte.

Brown recently joined Chapelboro columnist David Glenn, who was a student reporter for The Daily Tar Heel when Brown first took the UNC job in December 1987, for a one-on-one interview on the David Glenn Show, which is now part of the North Carolina Sports Network.

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Q: Great to see you again, Coach. How are you?

Brown: Thank you, David. Great to see you, for many years now.

Q: You recently said you are “as excited” as you’ve ever been as a college football coach, which is a long, long time now. Why?

Brown: David, I think there’s a number of things.

I know who I am. I know why I’m doing this. I don’t need the money. I don’t need more wins. I’m doing it to influence young people’s lives, so that’s such a strong purpose, and very few people get to do that.

Secondly, we’ve done some really wonderful things for the five years we’ve been here, but we haven’t finished right the last two years. So, people remember November, people are frustrated with us because of the State game (three straight losses to the Wolfpack), they’re frustrated with us because we haven’t finished the season.

And I got it. I’m the same way, so I want to make sure we get that fixed.

Q: At this year’s ACC Kickoff in Charlotte, I saw something I’ve never seen at one of those events. Your star defensive end, Kaimon Rucker, while in the midst of answering the media’s questions from the podium, looked over to you on the side of the room and said, “I just want you to know I love you, Coach.” What did that mean to you, even after all these years?

Brown: It means everything.

When I get frustrated with the university, or I get frustrated with the NCAA, or NIL (Name-Image-Likeness), or the transfer portal, and I walk in and eat lunch with those kids, you just melt.

Then, it’s back to, “I got you guys. This is what I do this for. We’ll get the rest of it worked out.” But as long as these kids need you, then there’s a purpose, and that’s a really strong purpose.

I’m so proud of those guys (who represented UNC at the ACC Kickoff event). They’re all smart, and they all handle themselves so well. So I walk out of there like a proud dad.

Q: You recently were quoted saying things such as “Amateurism is dead” and “College football has become the mini-NFL.” Do you say those things with any sadness, or are those more matter-of-fact, candid statements where you’re just trying to reflect reality?

Brown: It’s a confusing answer for me, because I like the fact that the players are getting money, but I wish we had more guidelines before we started this.

The NFL model now is a better model than we are. That’s why we’re following the NFL, because they have a model in place and we don’t. The (NCAA) people that put these things in place didn’t think about the consequences, so we’ve got consequences.

As I look back, during COVID, I was pouting one day, and I told (wife) Sally: “What am I doing? I should have stayed with TV. We can’t even play! We don’t have practice. We don’t have coaches.”

And she said, “Maybe you’re here to help these kids. Some are about to lose their senior year; maybe they don’t ever get to play again. Maybe you’re here to help the coaches; you have money, they don’t. They can’t just quit. Maybe you’re here to help the poor people in this state that are struggling, because they lost their job with COVID and can’t eat.”

So I got kind of chewed out by Sally, and she’s really right, because she said that the coaches that handle COVID the best are gonna be the ones that win the most games.

We’ve said the same thing with NIL. If you can’t adapt and you can’t adjust, get out, because it’s changing, and it doesn’t care whether you like it or not, and the players don’t care whether you like it or not.

So I’m really excited. I’m encouraged that we’re having to make really good decisions to change in the midst of all this stuff, and the ones that handle the adjustments and the change the best are gonna win.

That’s my job, and that’s what I’m excited about.

Q: With NIL in mind, there was a time during this past offseason when many UNC folks were wondering whether (star running back) Omarion Hampton, Kaimon Rucker or others were going to remain Tar Heels or perhaps be lured away by big money at other schools. As you see it, is Carolina Football Nation — boosters, collectives, etc. — answering the call in this new, NIL-driven world?

Brown: We hadn’t been very aligned at Carolina. We’ve got 28 sports, and everybody (representing multiple UNC collectives) was calling and asking for money, and we’re finally getting alignment now.

We have Old Well (Management, which officially started Aug. 1). That’s our one collective, and that one collective is calling and asking for money. That’s instead of our boosters getting booster fatigue, with 13 calls for money every week.

Omarion and Kaimon stayed because they love the place and they love the culture. They’re getting some NIL money, but not near the amount of money that they could have gotten other places.

But I see us moving forward. One of our boosters that I love — and I won’t even say his name here — said: “I think NIL smells, but losing stinks. So I want to get involved so we don’t lose games.” And that’s the fact right now. It’s paying players; that where it is.

The full conversation between David Glenn and Mack Brown is available below:

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David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.

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