After Mack Brown won over the hearts and minds of UNC’s players, the wins followed
There was a time, a time not all that long ago, when Mack Brown was certain he had suffered the gut-clenching chill of his last Gatorade bath. In the aftermath of Brown’s drenching Friday afternoon, Dominique Ross stood next to him on the sideline, gently wiping down the North Carolina coach with a towel. Tenderly, even.
A little more than a year ago, they knew little more of each other than their names. The bond so obvious Friday did not yet exist. The same was true for Michael Carter, who Brown had moments earlier sought out deep at the back of the sideline to congratulate on a 1,000-yard season, perhaps a gambit to delay the watery fate he knew was coming, victory having been assured since the third quarter.
In the space of 13 months, Brown went from broadcaster and noted (former) program luminary to these moments in the wake of North Carolina’s 55-13 win over Temple in the Military Bowl. It was a leap of emotional distance that could be measured in light years, savoring the kind of moments more often shared between coaches and players who had several seasons of history together, from first recruiting visit to final college game.
Imagine the work required to win the trust of these players, shattered and bereft after two disastrous seasons. Win their hearts and minds, and the wins would follow. That was the theory, anyway. That was the challenge.
It’s what Brown wanted. It’s what Brown missed. It’s why he came back.
“To be where we are now compared to where we were a year ago,” Brown said, “when I walked into that meeting and looked into those faces that were sad and disappointed — they just lost their coach, they had a tough year — that dressing room was a lot of fun.”
Savoring the joy
Every coach has his reasons for doing this, spread upon the full spectrum between nobility and venality. What truly motivates some, it’s hard to say. In Brown’s case, it isn’t. He wasn’t forced to get back into coaching, but he needed it just the same.
The whole “builder-of-men” line of self-congratulation is on the first page of the handbook of football tropes every coach acquires at some point, and too often it’s merely a veil for the power-mad bullying many coaches still practice in the name of leadership. That clearly isn’t the case here. Even Brown admits the notion is “corny,” in his words, but the true culmination of the season wasn’t so much the win as it was Brown savoring the joy his players found in it.
“The bond with these guys, seeing them get better, is just invaluable,” Brown said. “And very few people get to do that in their lives. That’s why coaches have trouble getting out of coaching. It’s hard to win, and you have to win to stay, but if you can win and you get to stay, you can’t measure the value of helping guys grow.”
Which isn’t to paint Brown as some exceptional paragon of virtue — all coaches are sinners in the eyes of the football gods, in some way — but there wasn’t much missing from Brown’s life. He was still connected to the game of football and the coaching fraternity through ESPN, which paid him well. His legacy at North Carolina was assured whether he came back or not. He had to talk his wife, Sally, into this, into leaving behind their comfortable existence — television analysts are perpetually undefeated — for a fixer-upper of a job he’d already fixed up once years earlier, and with nothing to lose but a reputation hard-earned over decades in the game.
It was the players he missed. The players brought him back. And he, in turn, brought them back.
“When you have a coaching change, you don’t know exactly what to expect and what the future beholds for the team,” defensive back Myles Dorn said. “But as the year goes on, we created an identity for ourselves. And we set a standard we can build on for years to come.”
A game ball for a Brown
Hearing those words was a victory in itself for Brown, measured by the standards he set for himself taking this job. It’s what led him to the sideline of Navy-Marine Corps Stadium on Friday afternoon as the sun set, his clothes soaked with the dregs of glucose and electrolytes and artificial coloring, the kind of baptism of victory he once thought he had left behind for good.
“Sally did it once,” Brown joked. He rarely talks about himself taking the North Carolina job, almost always making it a point to say “Sally and I” took the North Carolina job, as he did again Friday.
It was fair to wonder what, exactly, she got out of this deal while Mack got to be Mack again with his team, molding, shaping and coaching the players he missed so badly while he was in television.
On Friday, those same players gave the game ball to Sally.
This story was originally published December 28, 2019 at 6:00 AM with the headline "After Mack Brown won over the hearts and minds of UNC’s players, the wins followed."
