UNC players getting called up in the NFL Draft.

We have four North Carolina Tar Heels selected in the NFL Draft and why not talk to Mack Brown, North Carolina football coach, about them and about what it means. First, so as we say hello and good morning to you or good afternoon to you, Mack Brown, tell me what it means to have Josh Downs, Antoine Green, Asim Richards, Ray Vahosik or Vahosik all go in the NFL Draft. What does that mean to the program? It's number one for those kids.

It's a dream. As a young guy, everybody wants to play in the NFL that plays football. Number two for your program, people want to go to schools where they're being drafted.

And over the last three years, Pitt, Clemson and North Carolina have had the most draft choices out of the ACC. And that's important for kids. It talks about that we knew what we were doing when we recruited them. It talks about development after they're here.

And it's really important. And a lot of really good college players on your team may not be NFL guys and that's okay too. But for those four to live their dream, it's a real positive for us and our program. And Noah Taylor would have been in that group, but he hurt his knee against Pittsburgh and he's still in the rehab process. So Noah will make a team.

He just got to pass that physical first. Mack Brown, North Carolina football coach is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. I want to stay in the big picture here for a second. And because you mentioned these kids, when you recruit kids, that it really is about, for a lot of them, can you get them to the NFL? What else do you think motivates a kid to choose North Carolina over, let's just say Virginia Tech, just to stay in the same region? Adam, what we try to do is we give them goals. Our goal when they come here is we want them to have more fun than anybody else in college football because college football has become a lot more like the NFL and there's a tremendous amount of pressure. And we still want guys to have fun.

There's a lot of mental health issues out there right now, more drug use than ever, more alcohol use than ever. So we want to make sure that they're having fun. We want to make sure they get their degree from North Carolina. It's a tremendous academic school.

It's very difficult to get in. And if you can get in here as a football player and get your degree, you're around all these brilliant students all day and those are your lifetime friends. And that really helps us. We want to win all the games because that's what you come here to do. We've been good. We've gone to four straight bowls and we've been an orange bowl. We've won a coastal championship. So we played in an ACC championship game. We've been good.

We haven't been great. We want to be great. And then the last thing, Adam, is we want them to better prepare themselves for life after football. And then you get your dream. Your dream is to have your family. Your dream is to have you be the CEO of your company. The dream may be the NFL.

Whatever that dream is, we want you to be able to look at that, but you've got to get through your goals before you can start thinking about your dreams. Let me talk about Josh Downs here. You've got, I mean, and both your starting wide receivers got drafted.

Josh, I think he probably lasted a little bit longer than everybody thought he would. I think a lot of people thought he would be a second round pick. Your thoughts on what Josh Downs can do for the Indianapolis Colts? He can do for the Colts, Adam, what he did for us. Every time he touches the ball, he's got a chance to score. He has a knack to get open. He can catch the ball.

He's such a fierce competitor. And we knew he would go between late first and we thought late second. He went early third, but what happens in the draft is people don't go back at them and review the guys that talk about the draft.

Nobody ever says they were wrong. I always thought, well, maybe everybody thought wrong because it's totally subjective on what those guys need on their team and what's taken before them. So one thing I learned about the draft many years ago is that nobody really knows where somebody is going to be taken. Maybe the first five slots. But after that, if you had a gap that you were planning on taking and then somebody else pops up, that's still on the board, you said, oh, let's take him now.

We'll try to get this one later. So it's just a crap shoot to figure out how these guys are going to be taken. But all of our guys were really, really excited. And the truth is, after you get drafted, now you got to make the team and now you got to play good.

So this is when it really starts that there's drama leading into the draft that goes back to work. Yeah, we knew where like guys like Lawrence Taylor and Julius Peppers were going to be taken. Yeah, I remember when Peppers came out the first time I saw Julius Peppers run, I thought that's not a defensive lineman. That's that's a tight end. That's a wide receiver. He is a freak. He was actually a running back in high school.

Yeah. And I mean, all those little guys trying to grab his ankles. It was hilarious. And he wanted to be a tight end, but I think we ended up helping him get to the right spot when he became one of the leading pass rushers in NFL history.

He was arguably the best basketball player on that team too. That made it to a final four back round is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. Were you worried at all? And this is kind of a departure from, you know, what I really want to talk to you about, but I'm just curious.

I don't want to run out of time and forget to ask you this. Were you worried at all when the season ended that Drake May was going to be, I mean, assaulted in the, you know, to come into the transfer portal? We concerned at all about that. No, I really wasn't. And people were obviously because of got out in the media and people were talking about him transferring and leaving. And he walked in my office one day and he says, you know, I'm not leaving.

I said, yeah, I didn't think you were leaving. And he said, coach, don't worry about it. But he's a legacy for the school. His dad played here.

His dad was a GA for me. I've known Drake since he was two and just watched him. And his brother's got a legacy here. His younger brothers playing on the basketball team, Drake may loves North Carolina.

And it didn't get into being about NIL. That's not what Drake's about. Drake's about winning games. Drake's about all the other players on the team. In fact, he's constantly asking me, who can he help on the team within IL? And that's just, that's just who he is. He, I looked out the other day and he was doing a commercial, an advertisement, and he had all of his offensive lineman out there with him.

So that's, that's the Drake May that I know. I think there's so much about NIL that gets overblown in the, you know, in the discourse. But I think more often than not, the kids are using it in a great way. And I just, I just see so much giving back, spreading it around, making sure your teammates are involved. I see a lot of that that we don't necessarily talk about.

Yeah, Adam, that's exactly right. And they're also doing a tremendous job of giving it back to charities. Our guys were, a lot of our guys went to a table to help feed underprivileged kids in Orange County a couple of weeks ago. And so they're, they're really learning how to give back. And NIL is so great in a lot of ways, and we've all discussed the problems with it. And we need to clean those problems up because some are, as I've said many times, cheaters cheat. And the ones that were cheating before are cheating now. It just, it's called something different.

They were doing NIL long before NIL was legal. But it, we've got to work on the ones that are doing it right, and the kids that are doing it right, and make sure that we focus on that. Is there a way, is there a way to really protect the, I guess, what the intent was, was for this to be for players to realize their value in the marketplace, as opposed to what it is used for in many places, which is an inducement to come to the school. Is there a way to protect the schools from that?

Yeah, yes. And I think we're all headed in that direction. And there've been some really embarrassing circumstances that have come up that will make us move faster. But a lot of the kids are using it for insurance. Their families don't have insurance, or they're using it to let their parents come to games if they couldn't afford to come and see them play before. Or maybe they're getting a two bedroom apartment instead of a one bedroom apartment simply because their parents can't afford a place to stay when they get here.

So there are a lot of positive things that are happening. And the other thing that I felt is when this first came up, I was really, I am big on amateurism, and I didn't see this coming. I would rather have it in something like an annuity for the kids after they graduated instead of giving cash to high school players. But it didn't work that way. So we'll work back to a salary cap or something at one point. But my wife Sally said, when this came up, artists in college can go get their art paid for and musicians can get paid for music, question athletes be paid for their name. And of course we say it's here, you're not paid for play, and that's exactly what it is.

Because the ones that are playing the best are getting paid the most. Are you looking for more in this world? Are you ready for something bigger? Then we are looking for you. The big hearted, the bold, the messy and the gutsy, the teachers, the growers, the builders, the skilled, the sharers, the change makers. We need you. We are the Peace Corps.

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Join us at peacecorps.gov. Mac Brown is joining us here. All right, I got to ask you about one more, another one of your players, Asim Richards, your offensive lineman. I know he's a tackle for you, but everything I read says that he might be able to make the most impact in the interior part of the line as a guard. What do you think about the potential for him moving inside and being that kind of a player? Adam, one of the best things about him is that he was an all-state basketball player.

I think they won 28 games, they were 28-0 or something his senior year in high school. And we always felt like he could play any of the five spots. And I think that's why the Cowboys got a real steal in the fifth round because he can play center. He's got such great hands. He can snap, he can play either guard or he can play tackle.

And he is also really a young guy that can get so much bigger and stronger. So we think he has a great future ahead of him. Final thing. Do you like your, do you like the, the new format in the league where no divisions and we're stacking them one through 14?

No, I don't. I like divisions because I like division championships. And, and we, we went to this format in the big 12 when I was there. And you can very easily have two teams play each other twice.

And you could have the two teams that play the last game of the season have to repeat for the conference championship the next week. So, no, I liked the divisions better. I was one of the ones that, that was, was very vocal about it and nobody cared.

No, I listened, but it's just, that's just the way I feel. I like, I like the championships. I like the fact that you can win your division and, and that's all gone away, but we're, we're doing things now, Adam, for TV.

Sure. Everybody needs more money within their, their league and I've got it. And they're trying to get better games on TV. And that's the reason they have us going to Clemson on the second to the last week of the season, going to NC state, the last week of the season, nobody would ever do that before you were playing West Carolina, before you'd play your rival on the road. And now we're playing at Clemson. So that, that wasn't done for any other reason than those were the best games on those weekends and TV needed it. It wasn't what was best for our team.

Yeah. Your, your last three games home against Duke. That's, that's no joke either at Clemson and at NC state. Well, it'll be, it'll be fun. It'll be fun for me to watch you. It's fun for you, but everybody talks about player safety all the time. And then we've got three of our toughest games in a road in the season. So when kids are beaten down anyway, so I'm not sure we were thinking about the health of our players when we scheduled those three games, but that's okay. We, we will show up at all three. Yeah.

I mean, it's not like you have a choice. You've, you've, you've got to be there. Mack Brown. I appreciate your time. Congratulations on four kids getting drafted and we will talk to you again. Thanks, Adam. Are you looking for more in this world? Are you ready for something bigger than we are looking for you? The big hearted, the bold, the messy and the gutsy, the teachers, the growers, the builders, the skilled, the sharers, the change makers. We need you. We are the Peace Corps. In more than 60 countries, we go all in and all out. We are volunteers, partners, communities, working together, living together, bringing our experience, passion and joy to building a better world together. From tackling climate change in Mexico to keeping kids healthy in Kenya, from sustainable farming in the Philippines to education in Kosovo, we learn more, give more, share freely and serve boldly. Are you ready to tackle the tough stuff, to go the distance to make a difference? Then we have a place where you belong. Join us at peacecorps.gov.