Brown Laughs Last : Coach Lifts North Carolina Program From Joke Status to a Contender

You hear about the guy who saw two North Carolina football tickets on somebody’s dashboard, broke into the car--and left two more?

See the sign on the freeway just outside Chapel Hill, N.C.? It read Interstate 40, North Carolina 0.

Hear about the line of convenience stores Mack Brown is going to open in Chapel Hill? They’re called 0-Eleven.

Mack Brown, North Carolina football coach, has heard them all. When the Tar Heels were suffering through back-to-back 1-10 seasons in 1988 and ‘89, local radio stations awarded prizes for those who called in with the best Carolina football joke.

Heck, back then, North Carolina football was a joke. Fans left most home games at halftime. By October, the student newspaper played Tar Heel basketball stories over the football team.

“One day I was driving my daughters to school, and we heard three Mack Brown jokes in a row,” Brown said. “They started crying because kids in their class had made fun of them. I told them they’re not talking about your dad as a father or a person. They’ve never been in practice, a film meeting--they’ve never met me. It’s just part of the job.

“They needed to understand there are some cruel people out there. They were embarrassed by the jokes, and so were my players. I just told them the only way to stop the jokes was to win games.”

So win the Tar Heels did.

North Carolina regained some respectability with a 6-4-1 season in 1990. They followed with a 7-4 record in 1991. Then came 1992, the breakthrough year, in which North Carolina went 8-3 during the regular season, finished third in the powerful Atlantic Coast Conference and scored a dramatic, 21-17, come-from-behind victory over Mississippi State in the Peach Bowl.

The Tar Heels finished 18th in the USA Today/CNN poll and 19th in the Associated Press rankings. The momentum carried over to the off-season, when North Carolina, ranked 20th in the preseason AP poll, received an invitation to play 18th-ranked USC in tonight’s Pigskin Classic at Anaheim Stadium.

Sure, the Tar Heels weren’t the Pigskin’s first choice. Game organizers went after perennial national power Miami and highly rated Syracuse and Boston College before settling on North Carolina, which was something of a consolation prize.

But the fact that North Carolina was even considered for this game is an indication of how far the Tar Heels have come in five years.

“The Mack Brown jokes have certainly dropped off,” said Brown, 42. “Our program has really stabilized when you consider that only 14 players on our team, all fifth-year seniors, have been associated with a losing year. But we still have growing pains. You have to be a consistent, eight-, nine- and 10-game winner before you’re considered a perennial Top 20 team.”

That is Brown’s goal now. North Carolina has cracked the Top 20 and climbed into the upper echelon of the ACC. Now Brown wants to hit the Top 10 and challenge Florida State for ACC supremacy.

“If you do that, you have a chance to play for the national championship, because our league champion plays in a Jan. 1 bowl,” Brown said. “But we’re still quite a ways from Florida State, because they’ve been consistent winners for 10 to 15 years, and they have great team depth. We struggle with that. If we lose a player here or there, we have problems.”

No, folks in Chapel Hill aren’t quite comparing Brown to legendary basketball Coach Dean Smith, who has won two national championships and made nine Final Four appearances. They don’t expect Brown to win a national title.

But a State championship, a high priority in a sports-crazed area where North Carolina State, Duke and Wake Forest also compete, would be nice. In five years, Brown’s teams have not beaten archrival North Carolina State.

“To the alumni those are valuable games, because they’re the ones who have to go to work every Monday,” Brown said. “We’ve had some good teams and great players, but we haven’t had continuous winning seasons.”

What Brown has had is excellent support from the university. Plenty of fans and boosters were disgruntled after Brown’s first two years, the 1-10 seasons in 1988 and ‘89, and many thought Brown should be fired.

But North Carolina Chancellor Paul Hardin told Brown he had a five-year contract and could coach as long as he wanted.

“I never felt heat from people who controlled my job,” Brown said. “That, to me, is heat. I did feel pressure from within to improve the program. If it didn’t improve, they wouldn’t have had to fire me. I would have quit.”

Brown has become quite proficient at reclamation projects. He took over a sagging program at Tulane in 1985. In 1987, the Green Wave went 6-5 and earned an Independence Bowl berth against Washington.

When he came to North Carolina in 1988, he vowed to build a good program , not one good team. Each of his first two teams had 10 true freshmen in the starting lineup, and the inexperienced players certainly took their lumps.

But that decision paid off in 1990, when a veteran Tar Heel team tied eventual national co-champion Georgia Tech and went 6-4-1.

Many of the youngsters from 1988 and ‘89, players such as cornerback Tommy Smith (first-round pick of the Buffalo Bills), running back Natrone Means (Chargers, second round), linebacker Tommy Thigpen (Giants, fifth-round) and safety Rondell Jones (Broncos, third round), went on to play prominent roles on North Carolina’s 1991 and ’92 teams.

The Tar Heels’ success has helped Brown earn two contract extensions--he’s currently entering the first year of another five-year deal. North Carolina has won honorable mention from the College Football Assn. for graduating at least 70% of its players for five consecutive years. The Tar Heels have a winning football program and are beginning to gain national recognition.

So everything’s peachy in Chapel Hill, right?

Well, if you know Tar Heel fans, you know they’re as spoiled as pampered pets. Their basketball coach has won 774 games with an offense geared toward patience and precision, but some fans would like to see a more wide-open style and individual flair.

Though Brown has a reputation as a great recruiter and is a highly personable coach, some think he’s too conservative in his play-calling. They want more excitement.

“We averaged 400 yards offensively last year,” Brown said. “To me, if you’re scoring points and winning nine games, you’re not conservative. Fans just watch pro football and they want you to do what Joe Montana does.

“We threw for 300 yards against Duke last year, and this year they ask if we’re going to throw more. Ernie Williams, who heads our foundation, said he wished we’d get more curriculums here, because all we’re graduating is coaches. They come back each Saturday with all the answers.”