UNC and football coach Mack Brown are parting ways, the school announced Tuesday.
Brown will coach the team’s season finale against NC State on Saturday, though no decision has been made on whether Brown will coach the Tar Heels in a bowl game, the school said.
Brown, 73, has three years left on his contract. The decision to part ways comes amid a rollercoaster final season in Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels lost four consecutive games, including an embarrassing 70-50 loss to James Madison in September, regrouped to win three in a row and then lost to Boston College 41-21 on Saturday.
Following the loss to James Madison, Brown said he told his team in an emotional postgame locker room, “If you all don’t feel like I’m the leader you need, then I’ll go do something else.” But he walked those comments back and later told SiriusXM radio on Nov. 20 that he was still committed to doing the job.
Brown’s second run with the Tar Heels resulted in a trip to the ACC championship game in 2022 and trips to bowl games in all six seasons. UNC never won the league championship with Drake Maye or Sam Howell, quarterbacks who were NFL Draft picks, but Brown left the program in better shape than when he got it. He inherited a program that had gone 2-9 and 3-9 in its previous two seasons under Larry Fedora.
In his first tenure in Chapel Hill, Brown went 1-10 in each of his first two seasons and then led the Tar Heels to four top-20 finishes in the AP poll including an 11-1 season in his final year in 1997. Brown’s 113 career wins, 10 bowl trips and four bowl victories are the most in school history. He’s quite simply the best football coach North Carolina ever had.
“Mack Brown has won more games than any football coach in UNC history, and we deeply appreciate all that he has done for Carolina Football and our University,” UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham said in a statement.
“Coach Brown has led the Carolina Football program back into the national conversation as we improved the program’s facilities, significantly increased the size of the staff, invested in salaries and bolstered our nutrition and strength and conditioning programs.”
Brown led Texas to a national championship in 2005. His 282 career wins between stops at Appalachian State (1983), Tulane (1985-87), North Carolina (1988-97, 2019-2024) and Texas (1998-2013) ranks 18th all-time in college football — and is only 10 fewer than legendary coach Nick Saban.
This story will be updated.
(Photo: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)
