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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


Q&A With Mack Brown

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Q: When you came in, you talked about reaching out to the high school coaches. Now did you find the things that you did were any different than your philosophies at Carolina, or just something not done in Texas in recent years?

A: I'm not sure what's been done in here in the past, and I'd rather not look back. We're doing the same things here that we did at Tulane and at North Carolina. We enjoy the high school coaches, we know they are the lifeblood of college football regardless of what state you're in. We had a tremendous relationship with those guys back at North Carolina and in Louisiana and feel like we are in process of developing the same thing here. We could not have had the recruiting year we had coming in without the help of a lot of high school coaches encouraging the guys to stay in-state.

Q: What were some of the things you hoped to accomplish right away in terms of recruiting? Obviously, you came in late, but as far the expectations and the steps you put in place, what were the goals and were they met?

A: We thought the number one goal was try not to be as concerned with how many guys we signed. It was obvious we didn't know enough about the guys on our team, so we couldn't concern ourselves too much with positions. But we didn't need to lose the first year. We needed to make sure the guys we signed were quality people and quality players. I felt we were able to do that. One of the concerns, when you come in and say, "Oh, we have to sign 25 guys," and you felt like maybe 18 of them were good, then all of the sudden with the 85 limit, it really catches up with you in the next two or three years. You really can't afford to take chances very often in college football because of the numbers game.

Q: What are you trying to do offensively and defensively at Texas? Is it any different than your pro-style schemes your last couple years at North Carolina?

A: No, it's basically the same stuff because it's been successful and we're so confident right now because the philosophy's worked at North Carolina. We just want it to work at Texas, but we feel it will work quicker here simply because we are further along with the philosophy. We are doing things better, I feel like, than we were when we first came to Carolina. So we've learned, and you should learn from experience. If you don't learn in this business, you get fired. We did understand that part of it.

But we still want to be an attacking style defense and we will be. We'll line up and pressure people and blitz, and stop the run first, and make them throw the ball to beat us. Offensively, we are going to be a pro-style offense. We're going to spread the ball around and we're going to be very balanced with what we do. We do not feel like you can just line up and run the ball and win games as easily as you used to. The great defenses around the country are forcing you to be more balanced, so that's something we want to do.

Q: Going through 0-5 and 5-0 starts in consecutive seasons, Tony Dungy recently said the key was teaching the team to "stay the course," to believe in what they were doing daily. Is your philosophy similar?

A: Very definitely. In fact, we talk very little about our opponents anymore. We talk about us being the best football team, day-to-day and week-to-week, that we can possibly be. At the end of the year, we want to make sure we won the games we should have won, because we prepared, and maybe upset somebody. We have a little slogan that says "Practice Winning Everyday." If you'll play at the same level every day, and play your best every day­whether it's at practice or in a ballgame­then, if the other team is a lot better than we are, make them beat us. So many college football teams lose games instead of someone beating them.

Q: Though you moved, you encouraged kids who had committed early to UNC to honor their pledges, and allowed some assistants you took to Austin help the Tar Heel bowl team.

A: Yes. Those are two things that made me feel so good. I had so much emotion watching the bowl game. My wife and I watched it in an apartment in Austin, Texas, by ourselves, by the way. It was so great to see Carl and the staff together. There were coaches that had come out here that went back from out recruiting to help Carolina win the ball game. From the first standpoint, I felt that those young people chose the University of North Carolina for reasons. Maybe we were part of that, but even with Carl staying, it was better, because it's a great school and that's where they should have gone. It's where they wanted to go. Maybe three years from now, I'll regret not recruiting some of them out here, because there's some great players in that group. But the second part of that, you're always happy as an assistant coach­I was excited when I was hired at Appalachian State­for Carl to have an opportunity to coach one of the top ten places in the country right now to coach college football, with a great team coming back, one of the best facilities in the country, he's got a tremendous staff­he'll do a great job. It's exciting for me. He was loyal, he worked very hard, he did a great job for us for 10 years and I'm really happy to see him get that opportunity. We'll be Tar Heel fans next fall.






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