Mack Brown won’t be back at North Carolina for the 2025 season after all.
A day after Brown said that he intended to return next season, UNC said it is firing the longtime coach. Brown will still coach in the team’s season finale against NC State on Saturday.
“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,” North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham said in a statement. “Over the last six seasons — his second campaign in Chapel Hill — he has coached our team to six bowl berths, including an Orange Bowl, while mentoring 18 NFL Draft picks. He and his wife Sally have done an outstanding job supporting the Carolina community, including raising funds for UNC Children’s Hospital while hosting other popular events such as the Ladies Day Clinic. Both also have been terrific in leading our program during some incredibly tough stretches, including the tragic passing of wide receiver Tylee Craft this season.
Brown, 73, was one of just three active coaches with a national championship along with Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney. The 2024 season was the sixth year of his second stint with the Tar Heels and the team had taken a step back the past two seasons.
North Carolina (6-5) lost four straight games after a 3-0 start to the season. The Tar Heels gave up a shocking 70 points to James Madison in a 70-50 loss to start that streak and the fourth loss was a 41-34 defeat to Georgia Tech after the Yellow Jackets scored the go-ahead TD on a 68-yard run with 16 seconds to go.
The Tar Heels are 3-1 since that four-game losing streak, but they lost 41-21 at Boston College in Week 13. The Eagles rushed 52 times for 228 yards and three scores in the win while North Carolina only mustered 36 yards on 25 attempts thanks to seven sacks of QB Jacolby Criswell.
“While this was not the perfect time and way in which I imagined going out, no time will ever be the perfect time,” Brown said in a statement. “I’ve spent 16 seasons at North Carolina and will always cherish the memories and relationships Sally and I have built while serving as head coach. We’ve had the chance to coach and mentor some great young men, and we’ll miss having the opportunity to do that in the future. Moving forward, my total focus is on helping these players and coaches prepare for Saturday’s game against NC State and give them the best chance to win. We want to send these seniors out right and I hope our fans will show up Saturday to do the same.”
Brown returned to coaching in 2019 after a stint at ESPN following his departure from Texas after the 2013 season. After he turned Tulane into a six-win team two seasons after the Green Wave went 1-10 in Brown’s first season as a college head coach in 1985, he was hired at North Carolina in 1988.
The Tar Heels were 2-20 in his first two seasons before posting eight straight winning seasons. Brown left North Carolina for Texas after the program went 10-1 in 1997.
At Texas, Brown took the Longhorns to two national title game appearances. Texas famously won the Rose Bowl over USC at the end of the 2004 season thanks to Vince Young’s iconic run and then lost to Alabama in the BCS title game in Pasadena at the end of the 2009 season. Texas QB Colt McCoy was knocked out of that game with a shoulder injury and it was the first of Alabama’s six national titles under coach Nick Saban.
Texas won at least 10 games in nine straight seasons from 2001 through 2009. However, things went sideways after that BCS title game loss. Texas was 5-7 the following season and never won 10 games again under Brown. As Texas scuffled to an eight-win season in 2013, Brown resigned that December and said that Texas hadn’t been living up to the standards it had set during his tenure.
Brown’s firing is the first for a power conference coach this season as North Carolina now has a head start on its coaching search. Very few power conference coaches are expected to lose their jobs this offseason thanks to a lack of top-tier candidates and the impending player revenue-sharing agreement via the House settlement.
