CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – In press conferences on Monday, North Carolina head coach Mack Brown assured his players and the media that after a tumultuous season, he intends to return in 2025 and continue to give the program his all. When directly asked whether he intended to return, the 73-year-old answered with a resounding “yes.” He discussed the impending N.C. State game on Saturday and everything else that comes with the end of a football season.
Twenty-four hours later however, and after a blistering 41-21 loss to Boston College, Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham had other plans and made the decision to fire Brown, potentially ending his tenure as the oldest FBS coach.
On the Tar Heel Sports Network’s basketball pregame, Cunningham said, “These are really, really difficult decisions and choices, and I feel really badly and a bit disappointed that Coach Brown and I couldn’t agree on how to proceed forward. You know, what Mack and Sally have brought to this community, what Mack has done for Carolina Football and for the University of North Carolina, his first trip here, his second time coming back. I asked him to come back. He’s done everything and more than what we’ve asked. Our facilities are better. Our fundraising has been better. We have better staff. We have better coaching salaries, and all of that was because he’s so good at doing all those things.”
Cunningham continued on to say, “We’ve had some inconsistencies. We had a lot of ambiguity about what our future looked like, and we needed clarity. This year in particular, we were up and down. We had all the things — the James Madison post-game thing — and I was really hopeful that he and I could agree what the future would be and when we would make that decision and go forward. But ultimately we
couldn’t. I said that we’re going to have a different coach next year, and we couldn’t agree about how.”
This Saturday, a battle of the Carolinas, will be Brown’s final game coaching in Chapel Hill and the end to a glorious timeline. He first began coaching at Chapel Hill in 1988 and stayed through the ‘97 season. He returned November 2018 – leaving a stint at ESPN and led the program back into the national spotlight with improved facilities, staff, strength and conditioning programs and through dedicated support to Carolina’s other 28 varsity sports.
The decision to let Brown go could be the end of his legendary coaching career, one most notably remembered by his career at Texas where he led the Longhorns to a national championship victory in 2005 and back to the title game in 2009. In his 16 seasons with the Longhorns, he went 158-48 leaving as the program’s second-winningest coach after the 2013 season.
In his second stint at Carolina he led the Tar Heels to bowl eligibility every season, including the Orange Bowl in 2020. But this season was one of his weaker ones, suffering multiple painful losses just in one season. A four-game losing streak coupled with these losses revived speculation about his future with the Tar Heels, yet winning three of the last four shifted the perspective on whether or not he would actually come back.
After many dormant seasons, Coach Brown poured light on Carolina football and the program won’t be the same without him. As he prepares to tie the bow in Chapel Hill, the search for his replacement must go on, with urgency.
In this new era of college football—NIL and the transfer portal—and revenue sharing now coming into the mix, getting a new coach won’t be the hard part, especially since this is the only Power Four head coaching vacancy in the country. The hard part will be finding someone capable of taking the helm, living up to expectation, and saving a potentially sinking ship.
Just an hour after the announcement of Brown’s firing four-star outside linebacker Zavion Griffin-Hayes decommitted from the Tar Heels, citing that Brown’s departure influenced his decision. And the dominoes may continue to fall not just outside of, but within the program as current players may elect to explore their other options.
UNC could be a favorable destination for coaches who might be drawn to ACC competition and while no names have been dropped yet, Cunningham said that his team has been receiving a lot of calls in the aftermath of the news.
“We’ll have a ton of people. I’d like to go very quickly. Last time we hired Mack, it was 48 hours. It won’t be that fast this time. We have a different Board. We have a different Chancellor. We have other folks that are involved. This isn’t my hire. This is going to be our hire. This is the University of North Carolina head football coach. It’s important to our community. It’s important to our future. It’s important to our athletic program. It has to be all of us behind this decision and say, ‘Okay, what’s the best path forward for us?”
Mack Brown Poured Light Into a Carolina Program That Won’t Be the Same Without Him