CHARLOTTE, N.C. – No need for Mack Brown to click on Internet college football recruiting sites or to study population growth figures. He only needed to drive from North Carolina’s Chapel Hill campus to Charlotte for ACC media days to understand the state of North Carolina’s growing talent level.
More people cause traffic jams. The state has grown from 7.4 million residents in 1997 when Brown last coached at UNC to 10.4 million. More families, naturally, translates into more athletes wading into the talent pool.
“One of the biggest things I’ve noticed different from the time I was here before is the growth in Charlotte,” Brown said Thursday at the Weston Hotel. “There are so many more players here than there were before. It’s a very, very fertile recruiting ground, and we’ve lost a lot of players the last few years.”
Brown emerged from retirement this season for a second stint at North Carolina after having left for Texas (1998-2013) and working at ESPN as an analyst the past five seasons.
The traffic may be a nuisance, but it certainly won’t keep Brown away from Charlotte. The Tar Heels open the season against South Carolina at Bank of America Stadium in downtown Charlotte. He welcomes the game, knowing it’s easier to entice Charlotte talent to attend a North Carolina contest at neutral site in their backyard than to drive 140 miles to Kenan Stadium. And, of course, he wants North Carolina to return to the Charlotte as the annual site of the ACC title game.
But, of course, the flip side also is true for South Carolina, a Southeastern Conference member with its own recruiting eyes on the North State’s talent. The Gamecocks’ campus is 93 miles from Columbia.
And coaches in the Carolinas aren’t the only ones aware of a growing talent base. In addition to the four ACC schools — UNC, Duke, N.C. State and Wake Forest — East Carolina, Appalachian State and Charlotte have all invested more in their football programs. In 2014, App State moved up from the Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision as an Atlantic Sun Conference member. Charlotte made the same move up in 2016 to Conference-USA.
And now Louisville, a sixth-year ACC member, is joining the hunt. The Cardinals’ new coach is Steve Satterfield, who success at App State earned his new job at Louisville. He has a wealth of high school coaching contacts to call upon within the state.
“We have too many ties here not to come down here — too many ties with the high school coaches in the area,” Satterfield said. “We’re going to continue to utilize that.”
If that’s not enough competition for recruits that are 3-stars, 2-stars and sleepers, there also is increasing competition from two particular, heavyweights Clemson of ACC in neighboring South Carolina and Alabama of the SEC.
Clemson and Alabama, which have alternated winning the College Football Playoff national championships the last four years, are name powers that have the draw to chase about any 5-star or 4-star prospect in the nation. Alabama’s recruiting map literally stretches halfway across the Pacific Ocean — Heisman Trophy quarterback candidate Tua Tagovailoa is from Hawaii.
Alabama has already burned North Carolina’s schools with a Wednesday commitment from 4-star quarterback Drake Maye of Charlotte Myers Park. Maye, a 6-foot-4, 205-pounder entering his junior season, committed to leave his home despite his older brother Luke Maye having finished an All-American basketball career for the Tar Heels last season and his father Mark having played quarterback for North Carolina from 1984-87.
The state’s growing talent base also has been apparent on NFL rosters. In 2016, North Carolina ranked ninth in the nation with 51 NFL players. The number improved to 55 in 2018, although the ranking dropped to 10th.
In the 2019 NFL draft, two players selected from Wake Forest High School in suburban Raleigh left North Carolina to play their college careers.
Defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence, who won two national titles at Clemson in 2016 and 2018, was the 17th pick of the first round by the New York Giants. Running back Bryce Love was a Heisman Trophy finalist in 2017 before injuries limited his 2018 season. The Washington Redskins drafted him in the fourth round.
Duke coach David Cutcliffe, entering his 13th season at the Durham school, also notes the changes since he first recruited the state as a Tennessee assistant in 1982.
“Right now the high school football in the state of North Carolina is the best it’s been since I’ve been around,” he said at the ACC Kickoff. “But it’s also the most competitive atmosphere in recruiting that I’ve been around.”
Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson, who enters his seventh season after arriving from Bowling Green in Ohio, feels better positioned to recruit statewide talent. The Demon Deacons are coming off three straight bowl trips and there have been significant facility upgrades.
“We have as nice an indoor facility as anybody in the country with the McCreary Field House, moved into the Sutton Sports Performance Center, opened the McCreary Nutrition Center. Our facilities now are competitive with anybody in the conference,” he said. “So I think when you now have a track record of success, you have facilities that are comparable with certainly everybody in the state, anybody in the conference, that helps draw better players.”
N.C State coach Dave Doeren, entering his ninth season feeling, enjoys recruiting closer to home compared to stops earlier in his career in states with limited populations. He was an assistant at Drake in Iowa, Montana, Kansas and Wisconsin before his success as a head coach at Northern Illinois earned the N.C. State job.
“I think 45 players on our team were from North Carolina when I was hired six years ago,” he said. “Now it’s upward of 70. So we always try to start in the state. It’s nice for those young men to have their families close. I think the transition for a lot of people is hard from high school to college. Sometimes having that family nearby helps them through those struggles.”
So good news is North Carolina is producing more talent, although it’s not near Florida, Georgia, California and Texas with their triple-figure NFL numbers. The bad news is, in a crowded field, there aren’t yet enough to go around.
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