With his days on the sideline likely behind him at this point, Mack Brown has been enjoying his time on the media circuit talking ball on various podcasts and shows.
The time away from the headset has also served as a period of reflection for the former UNC/Texas coach, which led to an interesting story about the lead-up to his walking away from Austin to work in television.
“I was with you, with TV, and I really liked it,” Brown shared on David Pollack’s “See Ball Get Ball” podcast. “I enjoyed having a team again. I loved, I was probably crazy, I would go Friday night and do a game or Thursday night, and then get up at 4 in the morning, fly to Bristol, do ABC ‘Countdown to Kickoff’ all day, then do ‘SportsCenter’ on Sunday morning before we’d come home. But I loved that.”
“I loved the game. I loved the coaches. I loved the kids that played the game. And that’s really, really important to me, and it’s what I want to continue to do, stay involved.”
“We got tired at Texas,” Brown admitted. “16 years is a long time at a place like Texas. [My wife] Sally always said it’s four presidential terms. So that’s a long time to be at the University of Texas, so it was probably time for me to leave there and for them to get somebody else new, because you get worn down.”
Brown went on to say that his time as an analyst after his run at UT also made him realize that he wasn’t done with coaching. And the only challenge he was willing to accept was at his former school in Chapel Hill.
“I like fixing things, and the program was in a mess. They’d won three games two years before. They’d won two games the year before. Nobody was coming to the games. It was really sad to sit there at ESPN and even watch,” the coach explained.
“… So we come back in, and what you really get into coaching for … you get into coaching because you can change lives. And that’s what’s so important. And people forget that.”
In 35 years as an HC Brown has compiled a 282-150-1 record with four Coach of the Year awards, 26 bowl appearances, the fifth most bowl wins in CFB history and one unforgettable national championship victory over USC in 2005.
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