Think of Mack Brown as the corporate CEO whose specialty is turning football programs around. Throughout his coaching career, Brown has taken over at schools whose teams were struggling and put them “back in the black,” not just winning on the field but also connecting in a positive way with all of the key stakeholders.
Posted 39 minutes ago Updated 38 minutes ago
By Bob Holliday, WRALSportsFan contributor
Chapel Hill, N. C. — Think of Mack Brown as the corporate CEO whose specialty is turning football programs around. Throughout his coaching career, Brown has taken over at schools whose teams were struggling and put them “back in the black,” not just winning on the field but also connecting in a positive way with all of the key stakeholders.
In his introductory press conference at the University of North Carolina on Tuesday (should we say “re-introductory?”), we saw Brown begin the work of team building in Chapel Hill. He will meet with players first and assemble a staff, but he has already begun to reach out to countless others in the university community whose support he will need to in his words “make UNC football cool again.”
Mack Brown’s first head coaching stop came in Boone. Brown took over an Appalachian program that had won just 13 games in three seasons. He led the Mountaineers to a winning season in his first and only year there, and more importantly he helped lay the groundwork for his top assistant Sparky Woods, who would then guide App State to its first ever Southern Conference championships in 1986 and 1987. ASU football has been moving continually upward since Brown’s 6-5 season in 1983.
Brown next took on the Tulane rebuild. The Green Wave had gone 9-24 in the three seasons before the 30-something Brown took over. Success did not come instantly, but Brown led the Greenies to a bowl game in his third season in New Orleans, 1987.
Then came the move to UNC. Brown’s predecessor, Dick Crum, was a very smart coach who is still today the winningest coach in UNC history (72 wins to 69 for Brown and Bill Dooley). But the professorial Crum never really connected with the fan base, and during the 1980s, UNC’s recruiting slipped, especially in the state of North Carolina. After a four-year stretch that produced just one winning season, then-Athletic Director John Swofford fired Crum and hired Brown.
The UNC turnaround was the longest and perhaps most difficult in Brown’s coaching career. His first two teams in 1988 and 1989 both went 1-10. But by 1990, Brown had recruited and coached well enough to finish 6-4-1, the tie coming against eventual national champion Georgia Tech. During the 1990s, Brown led UNC to three 10-win seasons, never finishing worse than 7-5. In fact, after 1989, Brown did not suffer another losing season until one 5-6 campaign during his final years at Texas.
About Texas. At the time Brown and his wife, Sally, who was a prominent Chapel Hill business woman, moved to Austin, UNC was a better job than Texas, at least in terms of wins and losses on the field. Between 1992 and 1997 Brown won 55 games and lost just 17 at UNC, while John Mackovic went 41-28 at Texas during the same period. But Texas, of course, offered great resources and a wealth of in-state talent.
Brown won in Austin immediately, and he won big. There were three nine-win seasons to start, then came nine double-digit win seasons in succession. Brown’s Longhorn teams twice won 13 games, winning the national championship in 2005.
The coach’s final four years in Austin dropped off a bit. 5-6 in 2010, followed by 8-5,9-4 and 8-5. I’m betting those last four seasons have something to do with why he wants back in. He also mentioned at his press conference that he and Sally have missed “having a team.
