By Sean Labar
UNC Coach Mack Brown is 73 and in his second stint leading the Tar Heels’ football program.
Brown coached the Tar Heels from 1988-97 before taking over at Texas from 1998-2013.
The accomplished college football coach has a 113-77-1 record at UNC since coming back to Chapel Hill in 2019. Brown helped completely revitalize the Texas Longhorns’ program from 1998-2013, leading the Longhorns to a national championship victory in 2005 and back to the BCS Championship game in 2009 , where they fell to Alabama.
Brown has led the Tar Heels to winning seasons every year except 2021, and as the 2024 campaign nears an end, they are (6-4) with a (3-3) record in the ACC.
With so much uncertainty in today’s college football landscape with NIL and the transfer portal completely transforming the sport, there’s been a narrative that Brown — who is an old school head coach — would walk away after this season.
On Wednesday, the UNC football head coach joined Sirius XM and didn’t hold back on his plans for the future.
More Sports News
UNC Coach Mack Brown Plans To Return In 2025
Brown admitted he gets frustrated with NIL and the transfer portal, but is constantly reminded why he still wants to coach.
“I love the organization of football,” Brown said.
“I love fixing things that are broken, I love planning for a game, the strategy that goes into it. But most of the time – I’ll get mad at transfer portal, I’ll get mad at NIL, I’ll get mad about this, I’ll be mad at the university. Then, I’ll go down and eat lunch with the players and say, ‘You know what? This is why I’m here.’ When I see one with his head down or he’s got some joy because his sister won a contest or won a basketball game or he lost a girlfriend or flunked a test or dropped a ball on Saturday, that’s my purpose. My purposes it to fix him, and try to help him get to a better place.”
The UNC head coach then made it clear he plans to come back in 2025 and has more work to do before he retires.
“And what I did at Texas, I started planning on trying to retire, and it didn’t work. I wasn’t as good at what I was doing … I was trying to make sure everybody was okay. I decided this time that I wouldn’t do that. I’m gonna work as hard as I can every day of my life to do what I’m supposed to do. And right now, my role is to help the young people. To do that, you’ve got to win games or you can’t stay. Everybody knows that. That’s the modern business.”
Of course the UNC brass has to be on board keeping Brown around for 2025, but with a coach of his stature, it’s hard to see him having the confidence to publicly state his plan to return if the administration had plans on firing him.
It looks like Mack Brown will be back in 2025 and that’s a great thing for college football.
