After a ten-year stint as the North Carolina football coach from 1988 to 1997, Mack Brown returned to Chapel Hill in 2019 with hopes of doing exactly what he did 30 years earlier… turning the Tar Heels football program around. To a certain extent, Brown accomplished what he set out to do. In the final two seasons under Larry Fedora, the Tar Heels won a total of five games. In each of Brown’s six seasons at Carolina, he’s coached the Tar Heels to at least six wins.
That wasn’t enough, though, for North Carolina to feel good about bringing back the 73-year-old for another go-round in 2025. On November 26th, the school announced that they would be moving on from Mack Brown at the conclusion of the season, despite a 6-5 record and Brown’s interest in returning for at least one more year. Despite being fired, Brown will coach North Carolina’s season finale against North Carolina State on Saturday night.
This leaves North Carolina in a position where they need to move forward with finding a new head coach, and they can’t afford to waste much time before they do so. In order to expedite the process, they could decide to make a push for coaches who don’t necessarily have a lengthy or noteworthy postseason ahead of them. On the latest episode of the College GameDay Podcast, college football insider Pete Thamel named two power four coaches who could be options for the Tar Heels.
“It would be really interesting to see if there is a power coach who emerges from a P4 league as a head coach to go to Carolina to change things up,” said Thamel. “You know, some of those names might be Dave Clawson, PJ Fleck – a guy, you know, who’s had very good success and those things.”
Carolina wouldn’t need to go too far to interview Clawson, who has been the head coach at in-state rival Wake Forest for the last 11 seasons. In that time, Clawson has coached the Deacons to a 67-68 record with a program record seven straight bowl games between 2016 and 2022.
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Fleck began his coaching career at Western Michigan, where in just three seasons he transformed the Broncos from a 1-11 program to one that went 13-1 in his final season. From there he went to Minnesota, where he’s become the 5th-winningest coach in Golden Gophers program history.
Given the success that former James Madison head coach Curt Cignetti had in his first season at Indiana, North Carolina could opt to go the mid-major route. If they did, Thamel noted that Tulane’s Jon Sumrall, UNLV’s Barry Odom, Army’s Jeff Monken and James Madison’s Bob Chesney could be options.