Mack Brown is one of the greatest coaches in college football history but his career came to an unfortunate end at North Carolina. The Tar Heels essentially forced him out at the end of 2024 after he tried to resign just a few weeks prior and then change his mind.
However, the 75-year-old is telling a very different story in retirement.
Brown returned to college football in 2019 after a six-year hiatus. North Carolina went 44-32 during his tenure in Chapel Hill and failed to reach its full potential. This past season was especially rough. The Tar Heels got embarrassed by James Madison at home, blown out by Boston College and blew a 20-point lead to Duke in the second half. It was time for a coaching change.
Here is where things get murky. Brown said after the loss to JMU that he would be happy to “step away if he couldn’t get things straightened out” and seemingly offered his resignation. But then he changed his mind less than 24 hours later. He wanted to keep coaching.
There’s going to be a day I wake up and say, “Somebody else needs to be doing this.” I haven’t gotten to that point.
— Mack Brown in mid-November
Brown also told recruits that he was not leaving. His resignation didn’t count. It wasn’t real!
Based on everything he said, Mack Brown wanted to keep coaching at North Carolina. The university ultimately chose to let him go at the end of November after he refused to retire. It later hired Bill Belichick as his successor.
Now retired, Brown’s story does not add up to his own words from just a few months ago. He claims that his plan was always to step down at the end of the year because he grew frustrated with the lack of financial commitment to the football program. He supposedly wanted out anyway.
They knew I was going to be through at the end of the year…
— Mack Brown, via the Associated Press
They, in this instance, refers to the power brokers at UNC who apparently knew that he was going to retire after the season concluded. But did they? His comments in October and November certainly did not indicate that he was going to retire. The Hall of Fame head coach says otherwise.
I thought it was really time for somebody knew to come in […] and kind of get a fresh new start. And I’d had enough.
— Mack Brown, via the Associated Press
Maybe these latest comments are true. Maybe Mack Brown is trying to save his image with revisionist history.
Either way, he was/is lying about something at some point— whether it be the non-resignation after the loss to James Madison or his intention to hang it up at the end of the year. It might be in his best interest to just ride off into the sunset at this point…