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The detail about Mack Brown’s career which needs to be kept in mind, upon the veteran coach’s return to North Carolina, is that he is and has been a CEO head coach.
Brown recruits the bejeezus out of the trail. He is a natural in performing the front-facing duties of a college football head coach. He is a public relations expert. He knows how to pump sunshine and put smiley faces on complicated situations. He knows how to work a room. His political skill in lobbying for Texas over California for the 2005 Rose Bowl paid off.
Mack Brown’s X-and-O acumen is not why North Carolina hired him. It’s not why anyone would have or should have hired him.
It isn’t done uniformly in the college football industry, but it is done at certain programs (think of LSU with Ed Orgeron). A CEO head coach leads an organization and is charged with creating a culture, establishing standards, maintaining frameworks and philosophical goals, and having his coordinators and position coaches implement the plan.
True, a head coach signs off on going for it — or not — on fourth down. They decide whether to kick field goals or go for touchdowns. Head coaches will always be important for those reasons. Yet, on-field play selection and game management (as much as I talk about them every year) are still relatively small parts of the full head coach’s job description. If player development, fundamentals, strength training, recruiting, academics, and motivation are done well, a program can succeed even if the head coach himself is not at the top of his game.
Plenty of mediocre coaches have made Super Bowls (John Fox twice, Mike McCarthy, Lovie Smith) or reached prestigious bowl games (Mike DuBose with Alabama, Clay Helton at USC, Gene Chizik at Auburn, Ron Zook at Illinois). They stepped into advantageous situations and had the right support systems in various iterations. Sure, those head coaches didn’t last very long (or in Helton’s case, doesn’t figure to last much longer), but they achieved in one season what other programs never attain.
Mack Brown is not the same coach he was 20 or 25 years ago. He was widely acknowledged as a first-rate program builder in his first go-round at North Carolina and then at Texas. Given that he so clearly ran out of steam late in his tenure at Texas, no one would expect him to revive UNC the way he did in the 1990s. If anyone is counting on Brown to turn the Tar Heels into an annual force, they are asking for too much…
… but if Brown has one huge season, meaning an ACC Coastal title and a New Year’s Six bowl game, his second visit to Chapel Hill will have been worth it.
The man who will bring UNC that prize is not Brown.
The most important thing college football head coaches do is recruit. The second most important thing college football head coaches do is hire the people who help them recruit and manage the team on gameday.
Dabo Swinney didn’t build an empire at Clemson because of his own X-and-O mastery. He hired Chad Morris. He then hired Brent Venables. He assembled a loyal and durable staff which bought into a method, followed it, and improved upon it. Clemson’s lack of turnover on its staff is a key reason why the Tigers are one of America’s two dynastic programs.
Mack Brown isn’t why UNC will thrive, IF the Heels do rise again.
Jay Bateman is the man who will make this project — “Mack to the Future” — work.
Jay Bateman accompanied Jeff Monken at West Point in making Army the ascendant service academy team of the past three years. Army lost 14 straight times to Navy from 2002 through 2015. It seemed impossible for Army to become the dominant team in the Commander In Chief’s Trophy series, and yet last year, Army went 11-2 while Navy and Air Force both failed to win six games.
The Black Knights’ defense became a legitimate force last season. It made a high-octane Houston offense look like an Edsel or a Pinto in the Armed Forces Bowl. Army’s defense played with the instinctive seamlessness of a well-coached unit. A coordinator could not have made that Army defense look more coordinated. Bateman gained Mack Brown’s attention, and now he gets to show his stuff in the ACC.
North Carolina isn’t ready to win the Coastal this year; let’s get that point out of the way now. The bigger question is if any Coastal program is ready to take hold of the division. No program has done that since Virginia Tech’s long reign ended in 2011.
The past seven seasons have produced six different Coastal champions: Georgia Tech twice, and five teams once — Duke, UNC, Virginia Tech, Miami, and Pitt. This division is up for grabs this year — not by UNC or Georgia Tech or Duke, but the top four teams (Virginia, Virginia Tech, Miami and Pitt) all have a chance.
The 2019 season for North Carolina is meant to establish a foundation which can bear fruit in 2020 and/or 2021. If that foundation is to be built well, Jay Bateman will be at the center. Mack Brown’s best hire needs to become a home run. If that happens, Mack’s second tour in Chapel Hill will be remembered as fondly as his first.
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