UNC Football: Where Mack Brown’s job ranks in all of college football

Mack Brown is back as head coach of the UNC Football program and Athlon Sports ranked it as a Top 50 job in the country

It’s been just over five months since Mack Brown took over as head coach of the North Carolina football program, beginning his second stint in Chapel Hill. Brown is replacing former head coach Larry Fedora who was fired after another disappointing season in which UNC won just one conference game.

Brown is hoping to bring back the UNC football program as contenders in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Tar Heels are just a few years removed from playing in the ACC Championship Game and giving Clemson a run for their money.

The head coach is off to a positive start early on by turning in a solid 2019 recruiting class, despite being on the job for just a few weeks.

His 2020 recruiting class is currently ranked in the Top 10 and he’s done a great job of landing some in-state recruits.

Following Spring practice and the long Summer wait for Football, Athlon Sports released its annual list of ranking all 130 jobs in college football. They used different measures on how they compiled the rankings as they noted below:

"Ranking all 130 college football jobs is no easy task. After all, the rankings are subjective based upon numerous factors, but we have ranked every college football program in the country, based on the attractiveness of the position from a coaching perspective. We considered many factors — tradition, facilities, location, money, ability to recruit talent  — but in the end, we simply asked ourselves the following question: Where would we want to coach?"

Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, Texas and Florida took the Top 5 spots in the rankings with Clemson being the first team listed at No. 7.

For the Tar Heels, Athlon Sports had them at No. 43 overall in the rankings and No. 8 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Here is what they had to say about the Tar Heels job:

"There are plenty of positives about this job — great school, great location, etc. — but there’s also a reason North Carolina hasn’t won a league title since 1980 and only once has strung together back-to-back winning ACC seasons since the mid-1990s. Maybe it’s the fact that basketball is king at UNC. Maybe the school isn’t committed quite like some of the top programs in the league."

I see the point they are trying to make. UNC is certainly more known for basketball but Brown is attempting to change that and put UNC back on the map for football. It’s not an easy task but if he’s able to come in and take the Tar Heels to a bowl game in his first year, that will go a long way.

For more on the UNC Football program, please check back with Keeping It Heel.