Mack Brown Tarheel Football: The Orange Slice Boogaloo

[MrPhlegm 3413]

[DCA_HORN 725]

Well they do have a lot in common.  They both quit working and still got paid.

Thought you were talking about ferentz for a second.

[markstanco 12786]

Add some blueberry yogurt and I'm in.

[Tex Long 4661]

Fuck. Mack. Brown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This cannot be said or written too often.

 

[Machinator 32103]

https://theathletic.com/916857/2019/04/10/north-carolina-mack-brown-head-coach-return-espn/

Max Olson: A familiar face in a familiar place, Mack Brown brings new perspective in return to North Carolina

@BigHorn'13

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Mack Brown waited 21 years to move into his new office.

Standing in it today, he smiles as he holds up a photo from 1996. There he is, grinning alongside then-athletic director John Swofford, chancellor Michael Hooker and All-ACC players Kivuusama Mays, Jeff Saturday and Greg Ellis atop a dirt hill at a construction site. Behind them, the concrete foundation of the program’s future was coming along nicely.

He and his wife Sally built one of the finest football facilities in the country. The Kenan Football Center, a $48 million building that now stands five stories tall on the stadium’s west side, was their carefully designed vision come to life when it was completed in December 1997.

But right before the move-in, Texas wooed and whisked them away. Back then, he had an 11-win Tar Heels team loaded with future NFL talent and was making $375,000 a year. They’d planned to stay here for a long, long time. But Texas offered a big raise, a big stage and an enticing opportunity to chase championships.

And that was the last time Mack Brown truly got to start over. For the first time since 1998, he gets to establish a new blueprint and culture and enjoy the honeymoon phase of a new head coaching job. Maintaining success in college football is brutally difficult, and few did it better than Brown during his 16-year run at Texas. But that building phase before all of it, that starting point? There’s a lot of joy to be found there.

After five years on television and out of coaching, the 67-year-old Brown is back where he’s beloved and reenergized by the chance to fix a program that gave him so much. He didn’t have to get back into coaching. He does know he’s done enough during his Hall of Fame career. He realizes now the only job that could lure him and Sally back in was the one he has now.

“I always felt bad about leaving,” Brown said. “This gives me an opportunity to come back and thank ‘em for what they did for me the first time.”

But make no mistake, he’s not doing this as a courtesy. And he’s not just here for a couple years. Brown is here to pursue championships again. And he comes armed with the wisdom not just from his triumphs and trials at Texas but also years spent studying how he’d do things differently if he ever did this again. What Brown learned in his five years between coaching jobs, and what he can recognize now about the end of his last one, is helping him set the foundation for this ambitious reboot.

“I’m a better coach now than I was when I left Texas,” he vows. “I’m a lot better coach than I was when I was here before.”

The carpet in the Kenan Football Center elevator bothered him right away. The elevator ride was missing music, too, so they cranked up — yep, you guessed it — “Return of the Mack.”

He noticed the tables in the dining hall weren’t being wiped down regularly during meals. He noticed the ketchup bottles on those tables weren’t full. Brown catches it all, astonishing his assistants with his meticulousness, and it all gets addressed. Now’s the time to do it.

“It’s amazing what his eyes see,” tight ends coach Tim Brewster said.

Brown prides himself on being the fixer. This is what we do, he says. He can admit he missed being the boss. And it’s easy to get people listening to the new boss when North Carolina has lost nine games in each of the last two seasons. It’s easier to get the fan base believing, too, in something they’ve already seen before.

“Everywhere we go, people are so nice,” Brown said. “They’re just overboard nice that we would come back.”

The role of change agent has to be refreshing, too, knowing where he’s been. Serving as the head coach of one program for 16 years is nearly impossible these days. Just two FBS coaches — Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz and TCU’s Gary Patterson — have reached that milestone at their current schools. And when Brown embarked on his fresh start, he knew there was so much he wanted to do differently this time around. He says he has a lot of regrets. As he talks through them, it’s clear so many feel tied to the difficulties of maintaining.

He regrets naming Will Muschamp his coach in waiting in 2008. He did it to double Muschamp’s salary, but all it really did was signal that Brown was ready to quit when he wasn’t. He regrets the “CEO coach” label, that he ever let himself be perceived as such. “I meant that I have my hands in everything,” he mused, “but that meant to everybody else that wanted to be mad at me that I did nothing.” He regrets taking shortcuts in recruiting in the later years, the times he “watched highlight films instead of seeing recruits and meeting them all the time.” He regrets how he reacted to the lows in those final years, how he let the Alabama game crush him.

And he regrets even throwing around the word “maintain” at Texas. He swears he’ll never do it again. When you focus on maintaining, he says, that just means you’re staying the same. You should want to reinvent yourself. He wanted so badly to uphold the championship standard, to bring a second national title to Austin and keep them contending with the elite year after year.

But after too many years on that job, the perception and the reality, the reputation and results, they all get skewed and distorted. More pressure, fewer allies. More blame, less credit. For Brown, a 38-14 win against Colorado comes to mind. He remembers how frustrated he was walking off the field in Boulder that night.

“I was mad because it wasn’t good enough to beat Oklahoma, it wasn’t good enough to beat USC, it wasn’t good enough to beat Alabama,” Brown said. “So instead of appreciating the kids beating a good Colorado team 38-14, I was miserable. Because I knew it wasn’t the all-in that we wanted.”

And this was in 2008, during the Colt McCoy heyday. This was one week before Texas would beat Oklahoma to move to No. 1 in the polls. This was a full two years before the Longhorns’ 2010 nosedive that forced Brown to clean house and hit the reset button. Still, the hints were there even as they won big. During those last years in burnt orange, he came to understand why Darrell Royal retired at 52. When losing becomes devastating and winning becomes a relief, Royal warned him, you have no joy in your life.

“And that’s the way I got at Texas,” Brown said. “I was putting so much pressure on myself to win. And because of that, I think I lost who I was. I wasn’t coaching for the kids as much; I thought I was. I wasn’t coaching because I love the game as much; I thought I was. But if you’re not careful, you win so much that that’s who you become. You have to win, and if you don’t then you’re not the same person and you’re not doing your job. I was letting everybody down.”

Brown won nine games at Texas in 2013 before he was forced to resign. In reality, it was one of the finest coaching performances of his tenure. But it just felt awful. And that’s when you know it’s time to move on.

North Carolina defensive coordinator Jay Bateman can point to a chat in December 2017 as perhaps the reason he’s here today.

Bateman and Army were getting ready to face San Diego State in the Armed Forces Bowl. Brown was getting ready for the ESPN broadcast. The two got together to discuss Bateman’s plan for trying to slow down Rashaad Penny, the nation’s leading rusher. They ended up talking ball for an hour. Bateman brought his daughter down to take a photo with the legendary coach. For a guy who attended a UNC football camp as a high schooler in the early 1990s, the whole experience was pretty darn cool.

“I remember thinking, ‘Man, when I’m 64, I hope I love ball that much,’” Bateman said.

Brown got to do this week after week for nearly three seasons. As an ESPN broadcaster, he was in the booth for more than 40 games and got a live look at more than 50 different FBS programs. He went from campus to campus, sitting down with coaches in production meetings and watching their practices and picking their brains. He loved talking about the chess match of it all, the high-speed problem solving that goes into great playcalling. And as he tended to do throughout his coaching career, he jotted down a prolific amount of notes.

Brown spent his Thursday and Friday nights in locales all over the country. He called games involving nearly every ACC team. He saw most of the AAC programs, too. And he visited the Big 12, the Pac-12, the SEC, the MAC and even Fargo, N.D. He got to call bowl games in New Orleans, New Mexico and the Bahamas. And wherever he landed, he was welcomed with reverence.

“Coaches lit up when he walked into the room,” said Adam Amin, his former ESPN play-by-play partner. “He knows everybody. He’s got a relationship with just about everybody. And the guys he doesn’t have a relationship with are the guys that were too young. And now they’re getting into coaching, this is their first FBS job, and they’re going to up to Mack and telling him, ‘Coach, I just want to say …’ Coaches were very open with him. Because they trust him, that he knew what to say and what not to say or how to say something.”

Brown should have been out playing golf and fishing and relaxing. But he jokes that he no longer had an excuse for his poor golf game, and he released a lot of the fish he caught. Just didn’t do it for him. He preferred the grind during those four months in the fall, even if it meant calling a Friday night game and then jetting to Connecticut overnight to serve as a studio analyst on Saturdays for ESPN and ABC.

Every week was instructive. Every game was a chance to pull back the curtain on two programs and dig into the details. Getting used to this new profession was challenging, sure, but it was also sort of a thrilling change-up after 16 long years of the same office and routine.

“You’re working 12 hours a day, every day, at Texas and you don’t leave campus except to recruit,” Brown said. “You don’t look at any other programs and you don’t think about anybody else. You don’t have any staff leave. You’re in a bubble and you don’t even get out. I was driving to work at Texas before the sun came up and going home when it was way dark. And I never thought about it. You look at your car and you’ve got 6,000 miles on it after five years.”

All the mileage of these past few years pays off daily. Bateman says there’s already been easily “30 to 40 times” when the new Tar Heels staff has raised an issue in a meeting and Brown has chimed in with how a school he visited handled it. What Bateman and the staff understand now is Brown hit the road to find answers.

Brown went to Kansas State’s coaching clinic, for example, and stayed to watch a practice. Bill Snyder ran the most organized practices he’d ever seen. So when Snyder retired this offseason, Brown didn’t hesitate to ask: Send me all your practice schedules. And Snyder kindly obliged. Brown borrowed elements of how Urban Meyer structured Ohio State practices, too, as he and his staff plotted out how they’d practice this spring at UNC.

Anything he liked — plays, schemes, coaches — he jotted down to study later. If I go back in, he always pondered, what would I do? That hypothetical paid off this offseason. He knew he wanted a high-speed offense in the style of Kliff Kingsbury and Lincoln Riley. So he called Kingsbury, who recommended Ole Miss offensive coordinator Phil Longo. He wanted a tough, attacking defense. Bateman was an easy choice.

“In retrospect, I did have five years to interview and study,” Brown said. “It was like an internship. And I didn’t realize it.”

What he missed most were the people, the chance to mentor players and staffers alike. Four years with ESPN helped keep him busy and immersed in the game. But Amin could see hints of that itch to coach in their work, in the way he would ask kids, “Where are you from, son? Tell me about your mom and dad.” He saw it when Brown pulled young coaches aside to dish out advice. Sally could tell there was just something missing.

He didn’t think North Carolina would open up. He’d befriended and backed Larry Fedora and didn’t want to see that. He wouldn’t interview for the job, either. But even if he didn’t expect it, he was ready.

Another thing Brown wants to do differently this time: Be more direct. Say exactly what he’s thinking, leaving no room for misunderstanding with his players, coaches and leadership. His new coordinators say they’re getting used to his charmingly folksy tone.

“If he sees something he doesn’t like, he’ll let you know,” Bateman said. “He’ll let you know really nicely. It takes you a couple times until you figure out that when he says, ‘Hey, have you thought about this?’ what he really means is, ‘I would do it this way. So change it.’ Which is great.”

Added Longo: “The most refreshing thing about working here for me personally is there’s no BS. He’s incredibly sincere. You just find yourself wanting to do a really good job for him.”

After a spring practice last Tuesday, Brown said he wanted to start seeing sellout crowds of 50,000 at Kenan Memorial Stadium for their spring games. When a reporter questioned that thinking, noting UNC is not Texas when it comes to spring football game attendance, the head coach smiled and replied: “I understand it. And I don’t care. It’s what I want.”

You could hear that same straight-to-the-point message in his post-practice address to his team minutes earlier. Brown told his Tar Heels they need to get in great shape. They need to get stronger. They need to care about winning every drill. He’ll play the guys who make the most plays, period. After winning just five games over the past two seasons, he knows the first step is getting these players to believe in themselves.

“We have to do a better job of coaching here than ever before,” Brown says, “because we’re not as deep and the guys haven’t won as many games the last couple of years, so they don’t have a lot of confidence. And that’s fun for us, to try to help these guys get where they need to go.”

And he thinks they can get this turned around faster than most might expect. Brown is empowering these coordinators to do what they do. He’s thrilled by the early results from Brian Hess, the strength coach he hired from Army who has worked with both Bateman and Longo in the past. The staff is getting recruiting rolling with a 2020 class that’s No. 9 in the 247Sports Composite rankings, and Brown is feted like a celebrity when he visits high schools throughout the state.

The facilities he built more than 20 years ago have aged well, and North Carolina now has a pristine $35 million indoor practice facility as well. They don’t need much around here. Brown is not having to spend these first years focused on fundraising or learning on the job. Instead, he can hit fast-forward on building this program back to where it belongs. He sees no reason why they can’t turn back the clock and win here like they did in the 1990s.

He knows precisely what it takes. You have to get kids excited about the program’s trajectory. You have to win the state. You have to chase Clemson. After five years spent watching, reflecting and recharging, Brown is confident he knows the path to pulling this off.

“I know the place. I know the people. I know the state,” he said. “It’s all played out great. Now we gotta win some games.”

[Viper 12219]

Those 90s ties were like magic eyes

[Tex Long 4661]

On 4/17/2019 at 10:48 AM, Tex Long said:

Fuck. Mack. Brown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This cannot be said or written too often.

 

 

 

 

tl;dr: Mack failed the last few years at Texas because he tried too hard.

[closetojumping 65398]

That fucking article highlights how little he's actually changed when you see the litany of bullshit about his time at Texas. Same old excuses, same old deflections, same old insecurities. He's a piece of shit when it comes to how he views fans. To him, they're an ignorant, idiotic groundswell of selfish pleas he's forced to address while trying to reign over a program. The king and his subjects, in the most medieval sense.

I've come to mistrust people generally when they want to harp on how hard or how long they work. It implies to me they're inherently missing the part of meaningful work in which thought and creativity is required. Plenty of people put in 60-80 hour weeks. Fuck, the first time I did that consistently, I was bussing tables. They don't build monuments for busboys or construction workers or washing machines, and all of those entities "work hard". What are you actually doing within that "work" to drive excellent results? The last 4 years of Brown's time at Texas and the recruiting cycles of the last 7 years of his time at Texas reflect that he might have been "working" up at the office for 70 hours a week, but he wasn't doing a fucking thing to add actual value to the program.

[Viper 12219]

well he did admit to phoning it in with regards to recruiting at the end. 

[Tex Long 4661]

It's all understandable. Both his Mom and his Dad loved his brother more than they loved him. Brother got a cool name, Watson; he got "Mack" - they couldn't even remember Bill, just called him Mac, and he couldn't even spell it.

 

Fuck. Mack. Brown.

 

 

 

 

[LTtxfan 49996]

What a fluff piece to help recruiting for UNC Football..... Just forgot the picture of Max Olson sucking on Mack's teat....

• “It’s amazing what his eyes see,” tight ends coach Tim Brewster said. Tim & Mack at The Strip Clubs Again
• Added Longo: “The most refreshing thing about working here for me personally is there’s no BS. He’s incredibly sincere. You just find yourself wanting to do a really good job for him.”    BARF 
•  “You don’t look at any other programs and you don’t think about anybody else. You don’t have any staff leave. You’re in a bubble and you don’t even get out. I was driving to work at Texas before the sun came up and going home when it was way dark. And I never thought about it. You look at your car and you’ve got 6,000 miles on it after five years.”  Probably why you sucked your last 4yrs
• He didn’t think North Carolina would open up. He’d befriended and backed Larry Fedora and didn’t want to see that. He wouldn’t interview for the job, either. But even if he didn’t expect it, he was ready.  BULLSHIT

Edited April 24, 2019 by LTtxfan

[LTtxfan 49996]

Mack is a King???    NOPE, just a Narcissist.....

[Tex Long 4661]

2 minutes ago, LTtxfan said:

Mack is a King???    NOPE, just a Narcissist.....

You spelt "brain-damaged self-important butter-toothed lying sack of shit" wrong.

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

yeah North Carolina was the only job Mack would have left TV for

I am sure he wouldn't returned a voicemail if someone from our administration had called him in November 2016 and said "you gotta help us, we're fucked, come clean up Charlie's mess and ride off into the sunset"

[Tex Long 4661]

Nah, UNC'll win a few. What they won't do is beat Clemson or Miami. Or, be fair, they might not be able to beat Fla State (still), and probably not Pitt, Georgia Tech, or Virginia. Well, or Va Tech. Duke might be a problem.

Okay, never mind.

 

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

"He noticed the tables in the dining hall weren’t being wiped down regularly during meals. He noticed the ketchup bottles on those tables weren’t full. "

Next fall:

Mack: "Attention to detail is how we win! I got the cafeteria ketchup bottles filled up! An' the cafeteria tables get wiped down after each person eating gets up."

UNC fans: "Man, we just lost to Clemson 65-13, don't you have anything more pressing to worry about?"

[South Austin 53222]

He's killing himself with the condiments.

[Grippe 323]

3 minutes ago, South Austin said:

He's killing himself with the condiments.

That reminded me of...

[Tex Long 4661]

6 minutes ago, South Austin said:

He's killing himself with the condiments.

I thought Sally was past child-bearing age? No need for... wait a minute! Has Mack named a Next Wife-in-Waiting?

 

 

[Nivek 17408]

"He noticed the tables in the dining hall weren’t being wiped down regularly during meals. He noticed the ketchup bottles on those tables weren’t full. "
Next fall:
Mack: "Attention to detail is how we win! I got the cafeteria ketchup bottles filled up! An' the cafeteria tables get wiped down after each person eating gets up."
UNC fans: "Man, we just lost to Clemson 65-13, don't you have anything more pressing to worry about?"

That is noticing the obvious.

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

"But if you’re not careful, you win so much that that’s who you become."

no offense, I know we won a lot from 98-2009, but I never felt like we were winning so much that it was dangerous to anyone

including Oklahoma

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

Just now, Nivek said:

That is noticing the obvious.

exactly

I would have taken the anecdote as more of a positive sign if it had been Saban-esque, i.e., "He noticed substandard aspects of the facilities immediately and within four weeks, North Carolina had a new Facilities Director who addressed the issues and <other details>". 

Not to read too much into the anecdote but OK, you had half full ketchup bottles and dirty tables. Now whoever was responsible has been told to fix those two things and they're better. What else are they doing wrong that you'll now have to notice and tell them to fix? Is Mack gonna have to pull a pube out of his Southwestern Chicken Wrap before he realizes the food prep isn't to code?

[Tex Long 4661]

3 minutes ago, SwanderedTalent said:

Is Mack gonna have to pull a pube out of his Southwestern Chicken Wrap before he realizes the food prep isn't to code?

Not up to Code? Bwahahahaha! Know how I know you haven't worked as a Professional in Food Prep?

[closetojumping 65398]

27 minutes ago, SwanderedTalent said:

"He noticed the tables in the dining hall weren’t being wiped down regularly during meals. He noticed the ketchup bottles on those tables weren’t full. "

Next fall:

Mack: "Attention to detail is how we win! I got the cafeteria ketchup bottles filled up! An' the cafeteria tables get wiped down after each person eating gets up."

UNC fans: "Man, we just lost to Clemson 65-13, don't you have anything more pressing to worry about?"

I reported to a guy with the exact same personality as Mack Brown. The type of shit quoted here is exactly what we saw and dealt with after his arrival. He was insecure, paranoid, and beholden to the concept of buy-in. At a craven level, he required that his team was fully bought in to whatever premise or vision he was peddling. He surrounded himself with cronies and gave himself great credit for noticing the cleanliness of the coffee areas and the exact details of dollars and cents on every expense report. Meanwhile, at the top line, we were still burning cash and trending away from our targets while his henchmen and henchwomen ran around singing his praises. He was eventually fired under similar circumstances of how Brown was run off. It was an amazing parallel to witness. 

Anyway, that guy now runs Trump Hotels International, which is fucking perfect for that piece of shit. It's very similar in final landing spot to Brown's at UNC. Fuck them both. It's a type though, and that type has a way of ascending with the unwitting in high places.

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

I am just really, really grateful for the University of North Carolina for taking Mack Brown off of my television every fall.

[MrPhlegm 3413]

"He noticed the tables in the dining hall weren’t being wiped down regularly during meals. He noticed the ketchup bottles on those tables weren’t full. "
Next fall:
Mack: "Attention to detail is how we win! I got the cafeteria ketchup bottles filled up! An' the cafeteria tables get wiped down after each person eating gets up."
UNC fans: "Man, we just lost to Clemson 65-13, don't you have anything more pressing to worry about?"

But FULL KECHUP BOTTLES!

[MrPhlegm 3413]

[Guest Lobo]

Ketchup.  Scares you to death.  

[Txzen 514]

Half-filled condiment bottles, like tackling, is a bad problem in America. 

[Tex Long 4661]

6 hours ago, MrPhlegm said:

But FULL KECHUP BOTTLES!

Strine talken 'eds. FTMFW. 

[LTtxfan 49996]

NOW...Mack Brown live on Austin Radio..... Horn Fm 

now at 7:30AM cst.    104.9 FM     or 1260 AM

[phdhorn 6225]

19 hours ago, SwanderedTalent said:

"He noticed the tables in the dining hall weren’t being wiped down regularly during meals. He noticed the ketchup bottles on those tables weren’t full. "

Next fall:

Mack: "Attention to detail is how we win! I got the cafeteria ketchup bottles filled up! An' the cafeteria tables get wiped down after each person eating gets up."

UNC fans: "Man, we just lost to Clemson 65-13, don't you have anything more pressing to worry about?"

So, if that's a differencemaker... another prospective UNC coach?

[Tex Long 4661]

51 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

So, if that's a differencemaker... another prospective UNC coach?

You've been tricked: that's not the real Ed Orgeron. Mmm-hmmm.

[Hank Chinaski 6353]

“And that’s the way I got at Texas,” Brown said. “I was putting so much pressure on myself to win. And because of that, I think I lost who I was. I wasn’t coaching for the kids as much; I thought I was. I wasn’t coaching because I love the game as much; I thought I was. But if you’re not careful, you win so much that that’s who you become. You have to win, and if you don’t then you’re not the same person and you’re not doing your job. I was letting everybody down.”

Man, I am generally one to sort-of defend Mack...you know, take the good (he did win a title, played for another, brought great players to UT, etc) with the bad (OU blowouts, last 4 years)...

But this quote is some bullshit that drives me nuts. Of course you should be pissed off if your team's performance isn't good enough (win or lose). Does he think this is unique to him? Fuck, our junior high coaches got mad if we played like ass and still won. Can you imagine Nick Saban saying this shit? Belichick?

And that is coaching because you love "the game", "the kids", etc...

I get that maybe he needed some time off to reset...but (a) he didn't voluntarily step aside, and (b) stop making up bullshit about how your failures are due to putting too much pressure on yourself. Every single coach feels that way. It's part of the job. Hell, it is part of lots of people's jobs. 

Goddamnit. 

 

Edited April 25, 2019 by Hank Chinaski

[Guest Lobo]

I like he always avoids the most obvious elephant in the room...that he was unpaid ungodly sums of money with unbelievable side benefits that the public will never know about...all for 17 seasons with all of 2 conference championships to show for it.  Nobody has ever made that much money in college sports for nearly two decades and had so little to show for it.  EVER.  Never in history.  He would do well to remember that.  And if he doesn't...I'll remind him of how he treated Pres. Powers in Brown's final days as a UT employee back in 2013/early 2014.  

Edited April 25, 2019 by Lobo

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

8 minutes ago, Hank Chinaski said:

“And that’s the way I got at Texas,” Brown said. “I was putting so much pressure on myself to win. And because of that, I think I lost who I was. I wasn’t coaching for the kids as much; I thought I was. I wasn’t coaching because I love the game as much; I thought I was. But if you’re not careful, you win so much that that’s who you become. You have to win, and if you don’t then you’re not the same person and you’re not doing your job. I was letting everybody down.”

Man, I am generally one to sort-of defend Mack...you know, take the good (he did win a title, played for another, brought great players to UT, etc) with the bad (OU blowouts, last 4 years)...

But this quote is some bullshit that drives me nuts. Of course you should be pissed off if your team's performance isn't good enough (win or lose). Does he think this is unique to him? Fuck, our junior high coaches got mad if we played like ass and still won. Can you imagine Nick Saban saying this shit? Belichick?

And that is coaching because you love "the game", "the kids", etc...

I get that maybe he needed some time off to reset...but (a) he didn't voluntarily step aside, and (b) stop making up bullshit about how your failures are due to putting too much pressure on yourself. Every single coach feels that way. It's part of the job. Hell, it is part of lots of people's jobs. 

Goddamnit. 

 

yeah, he's trying to make it sound like "I won a lot at Texas, I won and won and won, there was no end to the winning, until I fell so deeply in love with winning that I started overdoing it in my pursuit of it and I burned myself out by working too hard to keep trying to win and win and win SO FUCKING MUCH"

The truth is that Mack got complacent and kept pushing the boundaries of the least he could possibly do until the program imploded in 2010. And then he did a lot of inchoate stuff to look busy during the "rebuild" that really just amounted to a new mission statement and a "deck chairs on the Titanic" series of reorganizations-- in other words, his impression of a senior VP in corporate America. 

[runthebone 8376]

23 hours ago, SwanderedTalent said:

"He noticed the tables in the dining hall weren’t being wiped down regularly during meals. He noticed the ketchup bottles on those tables weren’t full. "

Next fall:

Mack: "Attention to detail is how we win! I got the cafeteria ketchup bottles filled up! An' the cafeteria tables get wiped down after each person eating gets up."

UNC fans: "Man, we just lost to Clemson 65-13, don't you have anything more pressing to worry about?"

It scares you to death, but maybe I'll play a freshman now. 

 

FYPM MBTF

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

14 minutes ago, runthebone said:

It scares you to death, but maybe I'll play a freshman now. 

 

FYPM MBTF

Edited April 25, 2019 by SwanderedTalent

[Dewey 3330]

I hope we breakout the bingo cards

[bigup2dahorns 3348]

I hope we breakout the bingo cards

Somebody else will have to start the Mack Brown weekly press conference threads this fall. Not gonna do it, wouldn’t be prudent.

[Red Five 41733]

Good to see he is still ridiculously full of shit.

[Tex Long 4661]

Some people are born salesmen - doesn't matter if it's used cars, irrational hopes, or obsolete coaching strategies.

Devil his due - FUPM MacBrown's got the silver tongue, and most of those Tar Heels are reader to buy what he's peddling. Yessir, devil his due.

 

[Mitch Cumsteen 18963]

On 4/24/2019 at 10:40 AM, Machinator said:

He regrets taking shortcuts in recruiting in the later years, the times he “watched highlight films instead of seeing recruits and meeting them all the time.”

I'm sorry, but while this is egregious for any college football coach, it is especially so for Mr. Fucking February who made his bones on the recruiting trail. It's the one thing that he actually did at a level higher than almost all of his peers, and he just decided to mail it in at the end. The hubris on this guy. It's no wonder our talent level went into the shitter. That lazy fuck drove this program into the ground because of 'all that winning he did' and then he got a $9.95 subscription and decided watching hudl videos was enough to keep this program at a championship level. As soon as he got high speed internet in his casita, we were done. In the meantime, Saban is crawling up every blue chipper in the country's ass with a microscope to figure out what makes them tick and we whiffed on a gaggle of Heisman trophy and first round draft choice quarterbacks in our backyard. Disgusting.

[MrPhlegm 3413]

yeah, he's trying to make it sound like "I won a lot at Texas, I won and won and won, there was no end to the winning, until I fell so deeply in love with winning that I started overdoing it in my pursuit of it and I burned myself out by working too hard to keep trying to win and win and win SO FUCKING MUCH"
The truth is that Mack got complacent and kept pushing the boundaries of the least he could possibly do until the program imploded in 2010. And then he did a lot of inchoate stuff to look busy during the "rebuild" that really just amounted to a new mission statement and a "deck chairs on the Titanic" series of reorganizations-- in other words, his impression of a senior VP in corporate America. 

[SwanderedTalent 5761]

1 hour ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

we whiffed on a gaggle of Heisman trophy and first round draft choice quarterbacks in our backyard.

Mack is/was probably the only coach I can think of who would have promised the Gilberts something like "we won't recruit another quarterback right away who could possibly supplant Garrett as the starter" and then actually followed through on it. 

[KYHorn 17614]

On 4/24/2019 at 12:03 PM, closetojumping said:

That fucking article highlights how little he's actually changed when you see the litany of bullshit about his time at Texas. Same old excuses, same old deflections, same old insecurities. He's a piece of shit when it comes to how he views fans. To him, they're an ignorant, idiotic groundswell of selfish pleas he's forced to address while trying to reign over a program. The king and his subjects, in the most medieval sense.

I've come to mistrust people generally when they want to harp on how hard or how long they work. It implies to me they're inherently missing the part of meaningful work in which thought and creativity is required. Plenty of people put in 60-80 hour weeks. Fuck, the first time I did that consistently, I was bussing tables. They don't build monuments for busboys or construction workers or washing machines, and all of those entities "work hard". What are you actually doing within that "work" to drive excellent results? The last 4 years of Brown's time at Texas and the recruiting cycles of the last 7 years of his time at Texas reflect that he might have been "working" up at the office for 70 hours a week, but he wasn't doing a fucking thing to add actual value to the program.

You're correct, based on time-series diaries. Not clear where liking posts on twitter would fall in the work/not work binary though (see: Giles, Oscar).

 

[Machinator 32103]

https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2019/5/15/18617486/north-carolina-football-2019-preview-schedule-roster

Quote

Second-time hires are usually disappointing. The promise of past glory is rarely fulfilled, and if it does, it doesn’t tend to last very long. But hey, when you hire a 67-year-old retiree as your head coach, you’re not worrying about the long-term anyway.

While I’m sure Brown has visions of a Bill Snyder-level extended tour, UNC would be best-served to think short-term. If Brown can give the Heels four solid years or so, leaving the program in good enough shape to hand the baton to a Longo or a Bateman, then maybe the hire will end up worth it. Granted, Brown has to let his young assistants cook without panicking and bringing in an old hand — something he struggled with at Texas — but he’s taken the right steps so far.

With a freshman quarterback and a rebuilt run defense, it’s hard to feel too excited about UNC’s prospects this fall, but if the Tar Heels can weather a rugged early stretch — their season begins with projected S&P+ top-20 teams South Carolina and Miami, and Appalachian State and Clemson come to town later in September — they could at least maintain bowl contention into November.

In all, UNC is a projected favorite in just three games, but seven games are projected within a touchdown. Brown was typically a pretty good close-game coach at UT, so maybe some of those games will flip the Heels’ way.

 

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

1 hour ago, Machinator said:

https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2019/5/15/18617486/north-carolina-football-2019-preview-schedule-roster

 

“Brown was typically a pretty good close-game coach at UT”

I’ll always maintain that this was FUPM’s most remarkable trait. Someday, I’ll look at every game and figure out how many he won on the “last possession” vs how many he lost. It has to be 5:1 while at Texas, and most of those were quality wins. 

[Mez2 4048]

On 4/14/2019 at 6:18 PM, texifornia said:

 

what is dead may never die

[Herpa Derpa 6343]

On 4/25/2019 at 2:27 PM, Tex Long said:

Some people are born salesmen full of bullshit - doesn't matter if it's used cars, irrational hopes, or obsolete coaching strategies.

Devil his due - FUPM MacBrown's got the silver tongue, and most of those Tar Heels are reader to buy what he's peddling. Yessir, devil his due.

 

Fuck Mack Brown, his silver tongue, his orange slices, and his yellow belly.