Brown back where he believes he belongs
Five years after leaving sidelines, UNC coach returns to Tar Heels
Mack Brown didn’t have intentions on a return to coaching.
Sure, there were intriguing job openings that would catch his attention from time to time since he last roamed the sidelines but Brown felt he had made enough money and won enough football games during the four-plus decades as a coach.
Yet there was something missing in Brown’s life, something that came to light when the 67-year-old returned to the familiar backdrop of the North Carolina football program, where he had coached from 1988-97. Something he discovered after visiting with several former Tar Heels players. Something his wife Sally had noticed for some time.
“A lot of the guys that came back said, ‘Coach, here’s what you said to us that made a difference in our lives,’ ” Brown recalled of those conversations. “When we walked out of here in August, Sally said, ‘That’s what you’re missing. You haven’t been as happy since you’ve been out of coaching because you’re good at this. This is what you do.’ It wasn’t the football as much as it was the kids.
“You love the game but the reason you love the game is because of the kids that play it. She said, ‘That’s what you’ve missed.’ ”
It was true. Brown missed mentoring the young men who would come through the programs whether it was during his time as a head coach at Tulane or Appalachian State or even Texas. It was those relationships he developed with those players he missed.
In the five years since leaving coaching, Brown had surrounded himself with the game as a television analyst for ESPN and ABC. Each Saturday he would get his fill of football on the set where he would spend the day watching 24 games. But now he needed a different challenge.
So Brown once again his wife for advice.
“I asked her, ‘Where would you coach?’ ” recalled Brown. “She said, ‘I’ll coach in Hawaii,’ and I thought, ‘Well, I’m probably not going to Hawaii.’ She said, ‘I’ll coach in the Bahamas,’ and I said, ‘They don’t even have football,’ and she said, ‘We’ll start a team and call it the Bahama Iguanas.’ ”
The third choice she landed on was Chapel Hill.
“I think it was just strange that we’re so blessed that this is the only place that we would have come and it’s the one that came open,” Brown said. “We weren’t going to interview for jobs and we weren’t going to get in line with five other guys and beg for a job. I think it was just supposed to be.”
Brown was hired a few days following the dismal of Larry Fedora, who guided the Tar Heels to a 45-43 record in seven seasons including back-to-back 1-7 records in ACC play in 2017 and 2018.
Brown spoke with the Orlando Sentinel about this spring and the transition back into coaching. Here are some of his comments edited for space and clarity: turned to
What’s the transition been like since arriving back at North Carolina?
Mack Brown: “It’s been great. … This is probably the only place that would have worked for Sally and I. We interviewed at different places every year. There were places that either wasn’t as excited about us or we didn’t want to live and it didn’t work out. As much as we hated to see Larry Fedora not coaching here, this was the perfect spot for us because we had lived here before and been here 10 years at the job. We knew the job, we knew the boosters. After four months, it’s been overwhelmingly positive and we’re excited. We learned what we missed was the kids and mentoring the kids. And that’s what we’ve really enjoyed doing. There’s no more important time in mentoring kids than when you take over a new job.”
How do you feel you’ve grown as a coach since being away from the game for more than five years?
Brown: “When you’re a head coach and winning a lot of games, you don’t look around very much. You don’t have staff change. About the only time you have a staff change is when somebody goes to be a head coach so you don’t have a lot of new ideas, you don’t have a lot of new energy and you can get stale. I used to say, we need to maintain this. You never maintain anything; you reinvent yourself and try to improve what you’re doing every year. [Former Texas] Coach [Darrell] Royal told me after we won the national championship, he said you’re going to like it and everyone else is going to like it so much that it becomes your goal and that’s the only goal. That’s difficult. It’s harder to win the second one than it was the first one. I think a lot of that was true. I learned so much in my five years about the media’s job because I had never been on the other side. Coaches don’t know about the media and you get paranoid and you think everyone is trying to get you. What I learned is you’ve got really hard jobs and you’ve got to find something that people are interested in to write about or talk about or you don’t keep your job. It has nothing to do for who you are pulling for or who you like. You’ve got a job to do.”
What are the challenges you face with the program this time around?
Brown: “I think the biggest challenge right now is the guys have not been very successful for the last two years. They haven’t been to a bowl game. They haven’t won a lot of games. They’ve lost a lot of games in the fourth quarter. They’ve had a lot of injuries. So what we have to do is help them believe. Help them have some hope and get their confidence back. We’ve been really, really hard on them and they’ve everything we’ve asked them to do to this point. them.” I’m really proud of
What has impressed you about this team so far?
Brown: “I think the biggest thing is they’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do. We said we have a formula that works, just look at our history. Go through our process and you’ll win. It takes a combination of a lot of guys doing a lot of good smaller things before you can get to winning. But don’t talk about winning, talk about the process and talk about doing things better and that’s what they’re doing.”