Mack Brown, North Carolina Tar Heels Head Football Coach

Throughout the 60s and 70s, cops hunted down key figures of the Dixie Mafia, including its enigmatic ringleader, Kirksey Nix. I'm interested in making money.

I'm not interested in hurting people. 15 years into Kirksey's life sentence, the Dixie Mafia was practically folklore, but that would soon change. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is Gone South, a documentary podcast from C13 Originals, a Cadence 13 studio. Season two, the Dixie Mafia, available now on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. The Listening You Love is on the free Odyssey app. Your trusted local radio stations, coverage of your favorite teams, live news from your hometown, and millions of podcasts on demand. Best of all, you can completely customize your listening experience. Follow topics you care about, like leagues and teams, pause or rewind your local sports and news, and add shows to your queue to catch up later. There's a lot to listen to.

So get started and download the free Odyssey app today. We continue. This is at Yelp show, Coast to Coast on CBS Sports Radio. Let's talk a little UNC Tar Heels right now. Their football team is eight and one, coming off a victory 31 to 28, up against Virginia. And one more win for the Tar Heels. They'll be in the ACC championship game this upcoming weekend.

On Saturday, they're in Wake Forest against the Demon Deacons at 7.30 p.m. Eastern. And now joining us is the legendary head football coach, and now back for a second stint since 2019 with the Tar Heels, and that is Coach Mac Brown. Coach, I know it's been a while. Appreciate you always carving out some time for us. How you been? I'm doing great, Zach. Thanks for having me on.

Well, I appreciate you coming on. Before the year started, it must have been a month before the year got underway for college football. I heard you on with one of my coworkers, the great Jim Rome, and you said that this team is talented but inexperienced, and now it's time to win games. You guys have done that, the winning part, at 8-1. Is that surprising to you?

You always knew that this group had it in them. It's not really surprising, Zach, but until they do it, you can't count on it, and that's it. Last year, we lost six games on the road. Last year, we lost close games that we had opportunities to win, and that's kind of been our MO since we got back here. In Texas, we were winning all the close games, and I thought that was a great message from our culture and our confidence and our program to our fans and our players, and we have not been able to do that here till this year.

So I'm really, really proud of this bunch. We've got three tough games left. They're finding ways to win. We still haven't played our best game, and we've got a lot of things that we've got to improve to win. We've got to play better Saturday night against Wake Forest than we played against Virginia to win that game, but they're a fun group to coach Zach, and they're trying hard. We've got a really good young quarterback, and, again, they're just finding ways to win. What was the game this year that you started to realize, okay, we have something really special, and we're doing that winning, and it's going to happen consistently? I think probably Miami.

You go on the road to Miami. They're very, very talented. They had a week off before our game, and I knew that would be a tough game for us, but when we won at Miami, we've had a strong game against Virginia Tech who's been a tough game for us.

I can just see this team getting better and better. Mac Brown here with us, the head coach of the UNC Tar Heels. They are 8-1, one win away from going to an ACC Championship game. When you were hired back at UNC in 2019, you know what people were saying. You've been out of the game a little bit, even though you were working for ESPN.

Has the game passed them by? It was all those topics of conversation. I know you probably won't give me much in this, but I have to ask, how personally satisfying is it that you have now had some sustained success again at UNC with all that was being said about your hire? Zach, it's rewarding that we can be back at UNC and be winning and see this little town buzzing and full house again, and the students are so excited. Really and truly, I had as many people talking about great to have you back in the game and positive as we did negative. We just hear the negatives a lot more than the positive. So I never questioned that.

I never worried about it. The only thing that I think that's a negative with an older person is if you're tired and you're not passionate. If you've got the experience and you've still got the energy and you're excited about playing, kids aren't any different. They wanna play, they wanna win, they wanna go to the NFL. They want you to treat them right.

They want you to push them hard. So in football, I was lucky enough to be in TV for the five years I was out. So I studied football probably differently but more than I did at Texas because we kept doing the same stuff.

And this just gave me an opportunity to get outside my little box and start looking at what other people are doing that I could like and not like as much. And look at the great young coaches across the country. Your quarterback, Drake May, has been everything and then some. Give me your evaluation of your quarterback and what he's been able to do this year. He's been amazing to this point.

He hasn't had a freshman outing. He's been tough. He's been smart. He protects the ball and he gets better each week.

So just really, really excited about him. I thought they asked me after the game the other day what makes him so good and he's competitive. He's got a tremendous passion for the game. He's tough, but he's lived the game. He grew up with a dad that was one of the best quarterbacks in ACC history. And he grew up with older brothers that all won national championships that are beating him up at the dinner table and on the basketball court. So he has got to be tough and competitive. He has entered the Heisman Trophy conversation now and I think people are starting to realize how good of a quarterback you have.

Would you be disappointed if he's not a finalist in New York coming up next month? I would, but we've still got a month. And that's what I've told this team. Let's don't start talking about the ACC championship game until we earn it.

I don't want to back into it. I want to be a team that's improved each week and getting better. And the same with Drake. I remember when we had the Heisman Trophy candidates and Ricky Williams won and Vince Young and Colt McCoy went to New York. I remember there was always had to be a Heisman moment or a game you won late to make sure that it solidified your trip. And we've still got three tough games for that to happen for Drake. I know he was originally committed to Alabama and then you got him to flip to UNC.

How did you get that to go down? Because we know Alabama is one of those dream locations and has been the creme de la creme team for so many years. Well, I said Drake not coming to this school after the history with his family and him from Charlotte would be like Archie Manning not going to Ole Miss. He was built for this school. He was made for this school. His brother wins the national championship here. His dad's a great quarterback here and he's going to live in Charlotte when he gets through most likely. So this was the best place for him and he knows that now. Talking to the legendary coach, Mack Brown, I know so many people, and this is just the nature of the beast when you have a great quarterback, that's all we want to talk about.

So I want to give you a few moments here. What are the other parts of the team that if someone hasn't watched UNC this year that you really want to just highlight those players and the work that they've done? The offensive line under Jack McNell has done a great job. Zach, we've got 11 fewer sacks than we had at this time last year. Our receivers, Josh Downs, may be the best receiver in the country. He had 15 catches, won off the school record on Saturday, and had two punt returns, one for 19 and one for 38.

Antoine Green's an outstanding receiver. And we've got some great players on defense. So this is a team that's getting better on defense where people have beaten up our defense.

They have Appalachian score, and it was very deserving. I think Houston and SMU probably took some of the credit away from this credit that our defense would have gotten now with their 77-68 game or whatever it was. But our defense is actually just giving up eight and a half points the second half of ACC games and only five and a half points in the fourth quarter. So we're getting better in all those areas. When you first look at Wake Forest, and obviously they're no stranger to you guys, we know they have an unbelievable quarterback in Sam Hartman. What jumps off the page, Coach? Sam Hartman and the great receivers. We've played them the last two years, and the scores have been in the 50s.

So I've seen Sam Hartman score over 50 points twice at Keenan Stadium. So I know what he's capable of. He's tough, he's smart.

He is a guy that's so accurate, and he's a great leader. And their receivers are as good as anybody in the country. I don't think they get the publicity that they deserve. And they've got a unique offense. They've paused and does a tremendous job of coaching. You look at it, they've got some of the teams with the fewest penalties in college football, so they're taught well.

So we know we've got our hands full. What is Coach Gene Chiswick, your defensive coordinator, who's back with UNC this season, what has he really brought to this program? We all know what he did at Auburn, but what has he done this year for your Tar Heels? He's brought credibility. He won a national championship with me as the defensive coordinator, and then he won a national championship at Auburn as a head coach. He won 11 games the last time he was here, which is the best season since 1997. So he fits this place.

People are familiar with him. He's getting our defense back on track, and I just love who he is and what he stands for, and the kids really believe in him. Wrapping up with Mack Brown on the Zach Gelb Show on CBS Sports Radio, one of your former players, Jeff Saturday, was announced today, surprised a lot of people that he's going to be the interim head coach of the Indianapolis Colts.

When you saw that news, what was your reaction? I'm really, really proud for Jeff. His son's on our football team as a wide receiver, and Jeff's one of the greatest stories of overcoming.

Every time somebody said he was too small or not good enough or didn't meet the measurable, he just kept proving everybody wrong. And here he is, the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. So I'm hoping that Kyle Shanahan and Jeff Saturn end up playing in the Super Bowl, because if they do, both ex-players, I'm going to get good tickets. I don't know if that one's going to happen this year for the Colts, but what advice would you give him? Because I know he's only coach high school. He's never coached the NFL.

Clearly, he played in the league for so many years of that center position, but what advice would you give him? Coaching's coaching. And because he's been a great player at the NFL, he'll get it. Some of the guys that come from college to go to NFL, it seems like to me, they still try to coach him like a college team, and it just doesn't work and doesn't fit.

So Jeff gets it. Those kids will love him, and they'll be excited about him, and he'll do a tremendous job with him. I can't wait to watch him coach. Last thing I'll ask you, Coach Mac Brown, you know, and you even said earlier, the passion and energy is clearly still there for you, and then some. How much longer, has that crept into your mind, how much longer you want to be the coach of UNC and keep on coaching?

Zach, it really hasn't, because at Texas, I started looking at, was I the right one at the time? I was tired some, and we'd been there 16 years. And when you do that, you don't do as good a job. You start thinking about quitting. That means you're quitting. And you don't even realize it, but things aren't as good. So I made the decision, this time back, what I'm going to do is I'm going to coach as hard as I can and as good as I can and be as passionate as I can with high energy till the day I wake up and say, you know what, I'm not best for this program anymore, or it's time for somebody else to step in, or I don't really want to go recruiting.

If there's something like that that pops up, then I'll know it. But until that day, I've won enough games. I got enough money.

I'm here for these kids in North Carolina. And if I feel like at any point that someone else can do a better job than me, that would be the time that I would start thinking about letting somebody else have it. That's the way that it should be, and you definitely have earned it. Coach, I can't congratulate you enough for the success so far. Now you've still got some more things to do. So we'll let you run, and we appreciate you joining us today.

Thanks, Zach. Thanks for having me on. The Listening You Love is on the free Odyssey app, your trusted local radio stations, coverage of your favorite teams, live news from your hometown, and millions of podcasts on demand. Best of all, you can completely customize your listening experience, follow topics you care about, like leagues and teams, pause or rewind your local sports and news, and add shows to your queue to catch up later. There's a lot to listen to.

So get started and download the free Odyssey app today. Throughout the 60s and 70s, cops hunted down key figures of the Dixie Mafia, including its enigmatic ring leader, Kirksey Nix. I'm interested in making money.

I'm not interested in hurting people. 15 years into Kirksey's life sentence, the Dixie Mafia was practically folklore, but that would soon change. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is Gone South, a documentary podcast from C13 Originals, a Cadence 13 studio. Season 2, the Dixie Mafia. Available now on the Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts. The listening you love is on the free Odyssey app. Your trusted local radio stations, coverage of your favorite teams, live news from your hometown, and millions of podcasts on demand. Best of all, you can completely customize your listening experience, follow topics you care about, like leagues and teams, pause or rewind your local sports and news, and add shows to your queue to catch up later. There's a lot to listen to. So get started and download the free Odyssey app today.