Tar Heel HC Mack Mack Brown Interview

I get the breaking news of the day is that Matt Ruhle was fired in Charlotte, but we've got a lot of really good college football teams in our backyard. Two in the top 15, another that should be ranked in the top 25, frankly, at 5-1, the head coach of which joins us now.

I'm talking about North Carolina. It's Mack Brown, the Hall of Fame coach that's with us on in the Triad again. And coach, just because I know prior to you being at North Carolina for your second tour of duty, you covered Matt Ruhle when you were at ESPN. What do you think is the most difficult part about transitioning from college to the pro game?

Josh, it's a hard thing because it's so different. I had a couple opportunities to go to the NFL and I thought I always want to pick my own players and they have scouts and scouting departments that pick their players. I wanted to be in charge.

I wanted to make decisions since my name was on the product. And a lot of times there's a lot of decision makers at the NFL level in many of the programs. So I feel like, again, in college I've had a group of people that are around me a lot for a long time and I trust them and they know the philosophy I want. A lot of times when you change levels of football like that, you have to get some guys who have been on that level and maybe you aren't around them as much.

It's harder to put it all together. So I felt like that I understand college football and know what I'm doing with college football. I never, ever thought about the NFL when they were called simply because I didn't think I would be the best guy for them. And I know Matt Ruhle well. I love him. I did some of his games at Temple when he was there. I talked to him a lot when he was at Baylor. He is a great coach and a better person.

And some college football program would be really, really lucky to get him. I remember Roy Williams was talking to us a couple of years ago and telling us that he was contacted close to 30 times, like one of his grandkids kept track of how many times NBA teams would reach out to him, expressing interest in having him jump from college to the NBA. Was it ever tempting at all? Like ballpark it for me, how many times teams have contacted you? Well, it wasn't 30 for sure, Josh.

I don't know how many it was, but it wasn't 30. It was never tempting. At one point when I was at Texas, the Browns called and they were going back to Cleveland and thought it would be good to have the Browns coaching the Browns. And I talked to them a little bit, but I had just gotten to Texas and I really didn't think that it was something that I would be best for them. I've always tried to look at when somebody wanted to hire me, would I be the best one for them?

Because if not, it's not best for me either. So I've tried to be really hard on myself as an evaluator and figure out if I could do it or not and there would have been a learning curve for me at the NFL. So I felt like I've been doing this for 40 something years and I get it. I've seen just about everything you can see in this business. Sure doesn't mean I make all the right decisions still, but I've got some experience with most things that pop up.

So I just decided that it wasn't best for them or me for me to move forward. Mac Brown's with us here, North Carolina head football coach. Got to ask, since you haven't had one since 2020, how did you celebrate a road win this weekend at Miami? Well, we winning hard and we had a road win at Appalachian State. That was a great win. We had a road win at Georgia State, which was a great win. Oh, I'm at the ACC. I'm sorry.

Yeah. And really and truly wins are wins, Josh. So you just do the best you can do. One of the things that's so good about road wins are when you have one, you're in that locker room together. You don't have a lot of friends around on the road. It's not like at home.

A lot of times you don't even have the parents there. And then it's a wonderful flight back because you just get to spend so much time together and that's not the same for a home game. But proud of these guys. We haven't had three consecutive wins since 2016. In this program it's only, it hasn't happened many times on the road, excuse me, three consecutive wins on the road since 2015.

So I'm proud of these guys. And we've got another fun challenge this weekend going to Duke. So this will be a fourth road game already for us. So you guys have to step up and continue to get better. You can listen to that game right here on WSJS on Saturday.

Mac Brown's with us here. And what you're hitting on is something that I'm very interested in because last year you were very frustrated and you talked a lot about learning how to win. But compartmentalizing that a little bit, it's learning how to deal with success and putting wins together the way that you're describing.

What is the biggest obstacle you think that you think your team has climbed over early part of this year that you just weren't able to the last couple? It's being able to handle adversity and respond. You've got to respond to good things that happen in a game. You've got to respond to tough things that happen in a game. And there were some really difficult things in that second half that happened at Miami and the guys didn't even blink. They just looked at each other with confidence and kept playing. And that was one thing that last year's team, probably because I didn't coach them as well, were really up and down. So we were inconsistent. And so far this team is trying to grow up. They're trying to mature and just get better every day and not talk about who we're playing, not talk about where we're playing, just try to work and practice and play to a standard of excellence, push yourself to be the best you can be and really not talk about or think about any of the outside influences. Mac Brown's with us here.

You are listening to WSJS. You mentioned it is Duke versus North Carolina coming up this week. The first couple of years that you went up against the Blue Devils in your first tour of duty, some guy named Steve Spurrier was on that sideline.

Now it's a guy that we got to know really well for a long time in Winston-Salem, Mike Elko, longtime closet assistant, was at Notre Dame and Texas A&M in past years. When you think about your memories in this rivalry, what are some of the things that stand out the most? I think the most thing, the thing that would stand out the most for me would be the importance of the game to both schools.

For many, many years, they chose this to be a game where you play for something. The Victory Bell was something that started back in the 40s. It's been really, really important for each university to pull it back home.

They told me this morning, I think there's about 1,000 tickets left this morning when it started, so it's going to be a sellout. That's great. It's good that Wake Forest is winning and NC State's winning and Duke's winning and Carolina's winning. It's great for the ACC, but it's also tremendous for high school football in this state because it shows how good these programs really are. Dave Pawson's done as good a job as anybody in the country at Wake Forest.

Mike Elko was with him for a long time. You can already see the influence that Mike's having at Duke. They're so well coached. They're tough. They're confident. They're running the ball.

They're stopping the run. They've got a tremendous kicking game. Mike's a great hire at Duke and they'll just continue to get better.

Mac Brown's with us here. I'm interested that you brought up high school. A lot of the guys that you have brought in who are highly touted recruits have come from the area that you're talking to right now in the Triad.

We were thinking about it last week. You mentioned up the ACC Big Four. You mentioned how good they're doing right now, but you played Appalachian State and you've seen what they've been capable of.

East Carolina's probably going to be going to a ball game. Do you remember North Carolina football being as good as it is right now? How related do you think that is to how populous this state has become and the quality of high school football? I don't remember it being this good.

It could have been while I was gone because I was gone for 21 years. The high school coaches are doing a tremendous job in this state. There's a lot of players in the state and I absolutely think some of it is because of the population. Obviously when you have more people, Josh, you've got more players to choose from. Mac Brown, last thing for you. Speaking of recruiting, when Drake May was a commit at Alabama and you flipped him, did you think even then that this guy had the physical tools to be as special of a player as he is?

I really did. He's everything. He's a good basketball player. He's a good athlete. He's very competitive. He was raised in a competitive family. He's got a dad that led the ACC in passing, so he's grown up in a quarterback family where the dad would tell him every game they watched, look at this, look at this, do this. He helped him with his throwing motion.

He had him in camps when he was early. So Drake is just a guy who was raised, like Sam Howell, to be the quarterback at North Carolina. And I'm so happy to see him doing so well so quickly. How's Jacoby Criswell doing? Because there are a lot of people that are just focusing on Drake and forgetting that all throughout fall camp we didn't get a chance to see it.

We just heard what you said. It was razor thin to the point where the week of the game you weren't even calling Drake the starting quarterback. You kept saying, oh, Drake's going to be the first one to run out there. How is Jacoby doing? And are you concerned at all about quarterback depth? No, Jacoby is a tremendous young man, number one, and he's a great player.

And we would be having success if he was playing because we've got two of the best quarterbacks in the country. I kicked myself a little bit when we were ahead of Virginia Tech. I wished I'd put him in earlier because we need to get him in a game and get him playing some and give him a chance with the older guys and the starters when we're ahead in a game. Hopefully that will happen again at some point during the season.

But with Virginia Tech, we were ahead, I think, 41 to 10 with about 10 or 12 minutes left. And I think I wait to put him in with seven minutes. And he deserved to go in earlier.

So I second guessed myself a little bit there. And if it ever comes up again, and I hope it does, then we will definitely put him in the game. But Drake got hurt against Virginia Tech at one point. And Jacoby had to come in off the bench and throw a pass.

The one play was in there too. So he's great. And we've got some other good quarterbacks on our roster. So Phil Longo has done an amazing job of that room and getting those guys where we've got some depth, but preparing them all.

And if Jacoby had to go in tomorrow and play, I wouldn't worry about it at all. He's ready to go. Knowing you after the Duke game this weekend, you're probably going to be on the recruiting trail in the bye week, the week after that. So if you're ever back in the tryout, given how often you've recruited guys around here, have you found like mainstay restaurants or places that you have to hit when you're around here? Usually I don't have time to stop very much, Josh. One thing about the assistant coaches, when they get the head coach, which is not very often, they're not going to let him eat. So you don't stop. They're moving and shaking and working. And I tell them all, it's obvious I'm too heavy.

I like to eat, but they don't even listen to me when I'm out there recruiting. You're the best. Mac, congrats on the win. Best of luck against Duke this weekend. Thank you, Josh. And we appreciate all of our great fans in your area. And if you haven't bought a ticket to the Duke game with a thousand left, pick up the phone call, bring your family and help support your Tar Heels this weekend.