First and foremost: congratulations to Mack Brown for becoming the first non-quarterback, and first coach, recognized as a Legends Award recipient during the recent Davey O’Brien awards dinner.
What a tremendous honor for a tremendous person.
Now, let's get down to business.
Brown spoke to Stephen Hawkins of the Associated Press, and, of course, the topic of his departure from North Carolina was discussed.
The former head coach of the UNC football program was frustrated with how the situation played out and added an interesting caveat to the fold.
“I think the frustration was it was probably more political than anything else. They knew I was going to be through at the end of the year, but there were some, a lot of people, that weren’t on the same page. So it didn’t really matter in the end.”
Couple of things here:
For starters, Brown (as mentioned in the Associated Press' article) states that he didn't want to make any announcements prior to the NC State game. If you go back to Bubba Cunningham's comments, it seemed that Brown wanted to tell the team immediately.
That's the first of a few conflicting parts to this story.
Additionally, Brown cited that 2024 was always going to be his final season as the UNC football program's head coach. If that was the case, why did Cunningham say that the two sides couldn't agree upon how to move forward.
"I said that we're going to have a different coach next year, and we couldn't agree about how."
If it was as simple as Brown is making it out to be, why didn't he just agree to retire at the end of the regular season so the program can begin the process of finding his successor?
In his interview with the Associated Press, Brown mentioned one of the main reasons he decided to come back for a final season: Tylee Craft. As we all know, Brown was very supportive of Tylee and his family during his battle with cancer, as Brown was there essentially every step of the way.
It's no surprise that Craft's health played a role in Brown's decision to continue coaching, as he was focused on ensuring that he was taken care of during his time at North Carolina.
There's plenty of conflicting theories to this story, as we quite frankly may never know the truth about how it played out.
What we can gather from all this is simple: this all likely could've been handled much differently if all parties were on the same page (which, they likely weren't at the time and quite frankly still probaby aren't to this date).