The North Carolina Tar Heels brought in plenty of high-profile football recruits during the Mack Brown era, most notably quarterback Sam Howell and Drake Maye.
Brown recruited Howell in the pre-NIL era, when programs didn’t have to worry about student-athletes choosing money as their primary reason for committing, while Brown flipped Maye from Alabama in the NIL era.
On Tuesday, Nov. 26, UNC administration fired Brown after 16 total years in Chapel Hill. 2024 in particular was tough for Brown and the Tar Heels, who’ve experienced a rollercoaster of winning and losing streaks, culminating with Saturday’s 35-30 loss to NC State.
In Brown’s final postgame press conference, he highlighted how NIL money has changed recruiting for North Carolina.
“Now money’s different,” Brown said. “We lost 3-4 recruits at the end this year, just in the last 2-3 weeks, because they got paid. We asked them and they said we got paid. I said I got it. That’s another reason I think it’s a great time for me to get out. This isn’t the game that I signed up for. It had changed so much.”
UNC lost Class of 2026 edge rusher Zavion Griffin-Haynes on Tuesday, the same day Brown was fired. The Tar Heels lost a pair of tight ends, Logan Farrell and Marshall Pritchett, back in October.
Regardless of who North Carolina hires as its next head coach, Brown said that person will be in a much better recruiting situation – simply due to revenue sharing.
“I told the kids I’m sure they’ll get a great coach,” Brown said. “He’ll have a better situation than we did with NIL because of revenue sharing. We had about $4 million dollars, he’ll have at least $12 million. 3-4 times more money for the kids, so that should really help them. People have asked about transfers, we signed 26 kids two years ago and not one of them got a penny. All of them came out of high school here because they wanted to be here. I don’t see them transferring.”
If UNC makes the right hire,…
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