Mack Brown is headed back to Chapel Hill. A day after firing Larry Fedora, UNC has turned back the clock, turning to Brown who led the program from 1988-97 with a record of 69-46-1.
Brown left Chapel Hill for Austin where he found sustained success, leading the Texas Longhorns to a 2005 national championship victory. Brown went 158-48 during his tenure as the Longhorns head coach and held the job from 1998-2013.
Now, Brown will take over a UNC program that has shown promise, but has taken a step back over the last two seasons. It’s been reported that Brown will attempt to put together an all-star coaching staff (from a coordinator perspective) with Gene Chizik as the early favorite for defensive coordinator and the recently available Kliff Kingsbury as offensive coordinator.
As mentioned earlier, that’s a lot of money to dish out to a coaching staff when $3 million per year through 2022 is being paid out to Fedora. There should also be questions around Brown and if he’s the right guy for the job. Yes, he’s tied with Frank Beamer as the 9th winningest coach in FBS history, but he only won two Big 12 conference championships (sans title game), and was basically forced out at Texas because he didn’t have the team competing for a national title every season.
That being said, the Longhorns won at least 10 games for nine straight seasons, and only had less than nine wins twice (2010 & 2011) under Brown. The UNC alumni base won’t be as challenging as Texas’, especially when it comes to football, but Brown will be expected to win and get this program back to where it was in 2015.
