UNC's Mack Brown closes coaching tenure with rivalry loss, disappointment over handling of exit

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Mack Brown wanted to make it clear after his final game as North Carolina's coach: he's not mad at the decision, though he didn't like how everything was handled.

Brown closed his second tenure with the Tar Heels — and quite possibly a coaching career that carried him to a national championship at Texas and a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame — with Saturday's 35-30 home loss to rival N.C. State. That came four days after the school announced it was making a change and that Brown wouldn't return, even after the winningest coach in program history had said he planned to be back in 2025 a day earlier.

Brown said Saturday night he didn't want to announce a change leading up to the rivalry game and make his status a distraction for the players compared to doing it after the schedule was complete.

“Sally and I both agree that it was time for a leadership change at the top,” Brown said of his wife after the loss. “I was just disappointed in the way it was done. We could've done a joint press conference, I could've stayed and we could've worked all of this out where I worked here for a while. But that didn't happen.”

After last weekend's lopsided loss at Boston College, UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham — who was in Hawaii for the men’s basketball team’s games in the Maui Invitational — announced that he had informed the 73-year-old Brown that he wouldn’t return next season. The plan was for Brown to coach against the rival Wolfpack, though the announcement Tuesday said it was unclear who would coach the team in an eventual bowl game.

On Saturday night, Brown said that wouldn't be him. Athletics spokeswoman Robbi Pickeral Evans said Cunningham would soon meet with the coaching staff to name an interim coach for the bowl.

John Preyer, chairman of the university's Board of Trustees, was on hand for Brown's postgame news conference and has expressed displeasure with how the change was handled. That included saying Saturday night that he wanted “more transparency about the hiring of a new coach than the lack of transparency on what happened to our Hall of Fame winning coach, and how he was fired.”

Brown has 288 career victories, including 113 at UNC and all but six of his overall wins coming at the top level of college football. The 2005 title winner with the Longhorns, led by quarterback Vince Young, put Brown alongside Georgia's Kirby Smart and Clemson's Dabo Swinney as the only active Bowl Subdivision coaches with a national title.

He first spent 10 years at UNC from 1988-97 and built the Tar Heels into a top-10 program before his departure for Texas, where he remained until 2013 followed by five years in broadcasting.

His return to Chapel Hill in 2018 offered a reconnection to past success under a rejuvenated Brown, eventually leading to the program’s second trip to the ACC title game in 2022 with eventual No. 3 overall NFL draft pick Drake Maye.

Still, there was little question that the Tar Heels' trajectory since September had opened the door for a coaching change as they moved on without Maye. The most notable moment came when UNC surrendered 70 points in a home loss to James Madison, then stirred uncertainty about the immediate future of the program with emotional locker-room comments to the team that included floating whether he should remain coach.

The season also included the challenge of guiding the program through the death of player Tylee Craft after a cancer fight.

UNC recovered from a four-game skid to win three straight games and return to bowl eligibility, only to lose a lopsided game at Boston College last weekend followed by the school's announcement.

“Wow,” defensive lineman Kaimon Rucker said of learning the news when Brown addressed the team after Tuesday's practice. “Didn't expect it to happen that sudden. It was just a typical Tuesday practice, and he brought us up, he let us know he got released. None of us were expecting that type of news, especially that early on in the week.”

It all culminated in Saturday's game, which saw UNC take a late lead on a long touchdown only to give up the winning score with 25 seconds left.

When the game was over, Brown shared a midfield hug and a laugh with Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren, as well as a smile and a hug with N.C. State receiver KC Concepcion. That came as UNC posted a thank you to the Browns on the video board, though that moment of tribute was interrupted as the teams scuffled and had to be separated near midfield after at least one N.C. State player tried to plant a Wolfpack flag on UNC’s home field.

Once everything calmed down, Brown headed to the locker-room tunnel, pausing twice to offer final waves to the fans.

“I'm not mad,” Brown said. “I'm disappointed in the game tonight. But I'm not mad, I‘m not angry. I think it’s time to go. I always said for God to tell me when it's time to go. And oh my gosh, this year I've gotten a bunch of answers. And tonight just piled on. So I said, ‘I've got it God, I've had enough, I hear you.'”