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.<\/b>
\nPosted 39 minutes ago Updated 38 minutes ago
By Bob Holliday, WRALSportsFan contributor
Chapel Hill, N. C. \u2014 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 \u201cback in the black,\u201d 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 \u201cre-introductory?\u201d), 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 \u201cmake UNC football cool again.\u201d
Mack Brown\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s Longhorn teams twice won 13 games, winning the national championship in 2005.
The coach\u2019s final four years in Austin dropped off a bit. 5-6 in 2010, followed by 8-5,9-4 and 8-5. I\u2019m 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 \u201chaving a team.\u201d And to be sure, Brown wants to help Carolina recover its former glory. He loves the challenge of \u201cfixing things.\u201d So he will take on one last college football rebuild.
UNC needs a football makeover, not only on the field, but especially in the way the program is perceived. Since winning the Coastal Division in 2015, the football program has plummeted, both on the field and in the court of public opinion. Poor tackling and undisciplined penalties, intermingled with even more NCAA violations.
Former coach Larry Fedora created an uproar back in July when he questioned the validity of CTE studies in football, at a university which has been in the forefront of the research on head injuries and football safety for decades.
Fedora\u2019s comments in conjunction with the player suspensions from those NCAA violations cast a pall over the start of the football season. And while players, to Fedora\u2019s credit, gave great effort in every game, the losses mounted. The season ended with an overtime defeat against N. C. State and a postgame fight which Fedora would not even acknowledge. The ACC certainly acknowledged the fight, suspending four players for the first half of next season\u2019s opening game.
Fedora guided UNC through a period of NCAA probation\/scholarship limitations in his first few years. From 2012-2016, he won a lot of games. Then came the crash, both on the field and off. Fedora leaves behind a great deal of young talent. But the UNC football program is not thought of in the same way as basketball or women\u2019s soccer. And Brown clearly believes it should be.
Brown will do what good CEOs do. He will recruit top people, then work with them to produce the best possible result. Brown will quickly assemble a coaching staff, and he will coach the coaches. He won\u2019t meddle in minutia, and he will give his assistants plenty of space to develop game plans and coach players to execute on the field.
Pay attention to news about the assistants he hires. These people will be critically important given Brown\u2019s management style. The new head coach will be nice much of the time, giving pep talks when things don\u2019t go well. But be sure, Brown won\u2019t hesitate to make changes when necessary.
After UNC slipped to 7-5 in 1995, Brown shook up his offensive staff, bringing in a new offensive coordinator in Greg Davis, and installing a one-back, pass-oriented offense at the school formerly known as Tailback U. On the defensive side, Brown kept defensive coordinator Carl Torbush, but made a philosophical change to an attacking style defense. After the changes, Brown\u2019s final two teams at UNC went 10-2 and 11-1 (though Torbush coached the final victory in the Gator Bowl after Brown left for Texas) Those two defenses in \u201996 and \u201997, rank among the best ever at Carolina on that side of the ball.
Recruiting: At every stop along the way, Brown has excelled at recruiting. This new\/old coach will connect with high school coaches across the state, few of whom remain from his last stint in Chapel Hill. Brown speaks of getting the overwhelming majority of his players from the state of North Carolina, but he will bring in some players nationally as well. Who knows, he may even bring in a five-star recruit from the state of Texas. Brown is an effective communicator who knows how to sell the University of North Carolina to prospects. He also knows that he needs to change how the program is perceived if he is going to sell UNC to his best ability.
Image conscious: In the summer of 1989, I was doing an off-season TV story on Mack Brown, which included him playing golf with UNC boosters. This was a charity golf tournament and Brown had a 20-foot birdie putt, the sinking of which would help his team. Then Brown backed off the putt. \u201cTime out,\u201d he said. \u201cNow if I make this putt, with us having gone 2-20, how is that going to look?\u201d His playing partners assured him that if he made the putt, they would handle any resulting fallout. Brown, however, understood exactly how a slick putting coach with a 2-20 record on the football field would be viewed in the living rooms of eastern North Carolina. His ball did not come close to the hole.
Image. Mack Brown will care what people think. If there is any phase of the football program that does not represent the university in the proper manner, he will be accountable. And as he said at the press conference, he will hold players accountable.
Boosters: Relations between UNC\u2019s athletic boosters and the football program have not been the same since the NCAA scandal of 2010 and the dismissal of Butch Davis. Brown has the gravitas and the people skills to get those large donors interested in Carolina football again.
Fan Base: Crowds at Kenan the last few years have been far worse than the small attendance problem Brown inherited his first time around at UNC. Tar Heel home crowds have reached the point of crisis. Stadium atmosphere is hardly the only reason a recruit chooses a school, but UNC is getting scant little help from what prospects see inside Kenan Stadium on game day. Don\u2019t get me wrong, those fans in attendance, especially the students, are robust. But there are so many empty seats. Mack Brown will do everything in his power to win back the fan base.
Media: Brown will get to know reporters. Did you notice he called every person who asked a question at the press conference by their first name? Brown will answer questions. He won\u2019t be terse. At times, he may be just the opposite. He won\u2019t ignore questions about injuries either. Brown was very media friendly the first time around but says now that his years working with ESPN\/ABC covering college football have given him a new appreciation for the work members of the media do.
Acts of kindness: Mack Brown is known for reaching out to people in their time of need; players of course, but also folks outside the football program that he meets along the way. I\u2019ll give you one example. Mack Brown was a big supporter of our WRAL high school football show. He actually wrote a letter to our general manager in the early 1990s commending the station for doing \u201cFootball Friday.\u201d
In 2002, Brown brought his Texas team to Chapel Hill for a game against UNC. At 11:30 the night before the game, Brown called his Longhorn staff together and turned on the television in his hotel room. \u201cYou all have got to see this show,\u201d he said.
Brown learned watching \u201cFootball Friday\u201d that night that Clayton coach Gary Fowler had lost his father earlier that day. The next morning, Fowler received a phone call from the head football coach at Texas. Mack Brown took time to offer his condolences to Fowler, just a few hours before his Longhorns would take the field at Kenan Stadium. Vintage Mack Brown.
I don\u2019t think Brown is jumping back into coaching to go 6-6. We did hear him say that what he values most is the chance to work with young people and help them improve their lives. He will do that. But make no mistake, Brown believes he can compete with the ACC\u2019s best, or he wouldn\u2019t risk trying to add one more chapter to his coaching legacy.
Winning is never guaranteed, however. There are so many variables in today\u2019s college football. Brown may or may not win at the level of his last 20 years at UNC and Texas. But with his willingness to reach out to anyone and everyone connected with Carolina and his interpersonal skills, he will make friends for the UNC football program. Countless friends. And right now, that in itself looks like a major victory.<\/p>\n