Mack Brown gone - will not return after 2024 season

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Icky Mettle said:
Rank the last 10 UNC head football coaches based on their time at UNC and counting Mack Brown 1.0 and Mack Brown 2.0 has separate coaches.

I’ve got:
1. Mack Brown 1.0 - 69-46-1 (.599 win %), four top-25 finishes including two top-10 finishes with one top-5 finish, highest ranking = #4 (AP - 1997), eight seasons with winning records vs. two seasons with losing records (only seasons with losing records were first two seasons), best season record = 10-1 (1997; team finished 11-1, but he did not coach the bowl game).

2. Dick Crum - 72-41-3 (.634 win %), four top-20 finishes including two top-10 finishes, highest ranking = #8 (Coaches Poll - 1981), six seasons with winning records vs. three seasons with losing records and one .500 season, best season record = 11-1 (1980). Most of his success was in the first half of his UNC coaching tenure, with his top-20 finishes taking place in years 2, 3, 4, and 5 (out of 10).

3. Bill Dooley - 69-53-2 (.565 win %), three top-20 finishes, highest ranking = #12 (AP - 1972), six seasons with winning records vs. four seasons with losing records and one .500 season, best season record = 11-1 (1972).

4. Mack Brown 2.0 - 44-31 (.587 win %) (with a bowl game yet to be played), one top-25 finish (#18 in Coaches Poll; #19 in AP - 2020), four seasons with winning records vs. one season with a losing record and this season currently at .500 with a bowl game pending, best season record = 8-4 (2020).

5. Butch Davis - 28-23 (.549 win %) counting vacated wins, but 12-23 without counting vacated wins, three seasons with winning records (counting vacated wins) vs. one season with a losing record, best season record = 8-5 (three times, counting vacated wins- 2008, 2009, 2010).

6. Larry Fedora - 45-43 (.511 win %), one top-25 finish (#15 in both Coaches Poll and AP poll - 2015), four seasons with winning records vs. three seasons with losing records, best season record = 11-3 (2015), went 8-0 in conference play in 2015.

7. Everett Withers - 7-6 (.538 win %). Super small sample size, but he’s the only UNC head coach on this list not to have a season with a losing record.

8. Jim Hickey - 36-45 (.444 win %), one top-20 finish (#19 in Coaches Poll - 1963), one season with winning records vs. four seasons with losing records and three .500 seasons, best season record = 9-2 (1963).

9. Carl Torbush - 17-18 (.486 win %), two seasons with a winning record (not counting 1997 when he filled in as head coach in the bowl game) vs. one season with a losing record, best season record = 7-5 (1998).

10. John Bunting - 27-45 (.375 win %), one season with a winning record vs. four seasons with losing records and one .500 season, best season record = 8-5 (2001).

*Note: The AP Poll ranked the the top 20 teams until 1989, when it expanded to the top 25. The Coaches Poll ranked the top 20 teams until 1990, when it expanded to the top 25.
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Agree with your top 3 and bottom 4. I see no measurable difference between Mack 2.0 and Fed. Mack ever so slightly better overall but Fed had the best and most enjoyable season since Mack 2.0. Butch is an incomplete.
 
I put Bill Dooley at #1. Aside from the 1963 Gator Bowl season, UNC football had had no sucess since the Charlie Justice days.

Mack 1.0 is #2. Crum is #3. Do the others even matter?
 
Mack 2.0 nor Fed beat anyone I can remember who finished the year ranked in the top 20. Both feasted on a bunch of bad to very bad teams to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

Throw in they both fielded defenses who broke all time records on that side of the ball vs bad teams and id say they both were huge failures regardless of their padded win records
 
OGtruthhurts said:
Mack 2.0 nor Fed beat anyone I can remember who finished the year ranked in the top 20. Both feasted on a bunch of bad to very bad teams to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

Throw in they both fielded defenses who broke all time records on that side of the ball vs bad teams and id say they both were huge failures regardless of their padded win records
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2020 we beat Miami and they finished #22.
2021 we beat Wake Forest, they finished 11-3 and #15

2016 we beat FSU and Miami, the former finished ranked #8 in the nation, the latter #20. For this reason i'd put Fed's 2015 and 2016 season's as more fun than Mack's 2020. Also i have a worse taste for Mack2.0 because Mack had Sam and Drake for five starting yrs. What Mack had from the QB position is a pure luck. Fed got Trubisky for a single year's worth of starts in contrast.
 
Since @Icky Mettle did such a good job giving a summary of every coach, I'm not recapping them. And a major caveat is that I barely remember any of Crum's time as coach and have no recollection of either Dooley or Hickey. Also, I think there should be tiers as simple ordinal numbers don't show quite how things break down.

Top Tier ("Our Best")

1. 90s Mack
2. Dick Crum

Second Tier (The "Half-Step Down" Tier)

3. Bill Dooley

Third Tier (The "Mishmash of Decent Results" Tier)

4. Larry Fedora (credit for leading us out from the cloud of NCAA issues)
5. Butch Davis (knocked down a spot due to the NCAA issues)
6. Mack 2.0 (while he has better results than the others in this tier, there's also been much more disappointment and frustration)

Fourth Tier (aka Tier "Who Gives A Fuck?")

7. Everett Withers (he was an interim, he tried his best, he wasn't happy when he didn't get the permanent job)

Bottom Tier (The "More Losses Than Wins" Tier)

8. Carl Tobush (record makes him the best of the worst, but he took over a program in a great place and it went south fast)
9. Jim Hickey
10. John Bunting (I still have no idea why we hired him)
 
gregh1 said:
2020 we beat Miami and they finished #22.
2021 we beat Wake Forest, they finished 11-3 and #15

2016 we beat FSU and Miami, the former finished ranked #8 in the nation, the latter #20. For this reason i'd put Fed's 2015 and 2016 season's as more fun than Mack's 2020. Also i have a worse taste for Mack2.0 because Mack had Sam and Drake for five starting yrs. What Mack had from the QB position is a pure luck. Fed got Trubisky for a single year's worth of starts in contrast.
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Guess it depends upon what polls you use b/c im seeing Weak Forest finishing 21 in 2021 and Da U 27 in 2020.

Regardless, just pathetic that neither beat anyone in over a decade of football. Miami has been overranked every year for almost 2 decades on history alone.

How can you rank coaches all things considered? Bunting actually coached in a tough ACC and yearly his SOS's were top 10. Throw in his measley salary and hardly any financial support from the admin for assistants I'd say he should easily be replaced at the bottom by Mack 2.0.

Im not fooled by Macks win column the past 6 yrs and what it cost UNC per cupcake win.
 
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2015
2020
2016

That’s the way I would rank the seasons. 2020 better than 2016 because of the Orange Bowl appearance.
 
SnoopRob said:
Since @Icky Mettle did such a good job giving a summary of every coach, I'm not recapping them. And a major caveat is that I barely remember any of Crum's time as coach and have no recollection of either Dooley or Hickey. Also, I think there should be tiers as simple ordinal numbers don't show quite how things break down.

Top Tier ("Our Best")

1. 90s Mack
2. Dick Crum

Second Tier (The "Half-Step Down" Tier)

3. Bill Dooley

Third Tier (The "Mishmash of Decent Results" Tier)

4. Larry Fedora (credit for leading us out from the cloud of NCAA issues)
5. Butch Davis (knocked down a spot due to the NCAA issues)
6. Mack 2.0 (while he has better results than the others in this tier, there's also been much more disappointment and frustration)

Fourth Tier (aka Tier "Who Gives A Fuck?")

7. Everett Withers (he was an interim, he tried his best, he wasn't happy when he didn't get the permanent job)

Bottom Tier (The "More Losses Than Wins" Tier)

8. Carl Tobush (record makes him the best of the worst, but he took over a program in a great place and it went south fast)
9. Jim Hickey
10. John Bunting (I still have no idea why we hired him)
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Good point about Torbush. I remember watching the Torbush-coached Heels lose to Furman 28-3 in Kenan. I remember during that game Torbush made the most inexplicable coaching decision. I can’t remember the specifics, but it had something to do with his decision on whether to decline a penalty. What I think happened (and I could be remembering wrong) was that we picked up a bunch of yards and a first down, and a penalty was called against Furman on the play. Torbush decided to take the penalty, which resulted in a much shorter gain, and may not have resulted in a first down. The fans in the stadium were in disbelief, just as we all were when we saw the final score.

I guess I can see why UNC hired Torbush. The players seemed to really like him, and he did a great job as DC. Had Mack stayed, it’s very likely that a solid program somewhere would have given Torbush a HC job. And he excelled in his audition in the 1997 Gator Bowl. Maybe he should have stayed up in the booth to coach.
 
UNC interviewing Belichick even made the Dailymail headlines yesterday.
 
Concern about Sumrall: He has pretty much said that if Kentucky opens, he'll head that way.

There is mutual interest between UNC and Matt Campbell.

Belichik is rising.

Kane Wommack and Jeff Monken are fallbacks.

Nuts. Absolutely Nuts!
 
Batt Boy said:
I'm now hearing Matt Campbell as the most likely
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Matt Campbell may be our top choice but I would not describe him as "most likely" by any stretch of the imagination. He's turned down NFL jobs, Notre Dame, USC, etc. That doesn't necessarily mean he wouldn't leave for UNC, of course, but I don't have high hopes that someone who turns down programs that are willing to commit significantly more resources than we are, is going to come to UNC. I'd love to be wrong. He'd be our best hire since Butch Davis.
 
He's a fierce competitor. Not a great recruiter, but it's Iowa so we don't really know. But if you watch, his D's hit. On O, he gets his best involved every possession. And he doesn't have silly punters who run towards the guys trying to block the punt.
 
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