This wasn’t the season UNC football wanted, but there’s a reason Mack Brown was here

It would be both fitting and ironic, in this season when so very little has gone right for North Carolina, if this is the year Mack Brown finally successfully pursues his Great Garnet-and-Gold Whale.

This might very well be Brown’s last chance to beat his alma mater, something that is less a stain on his lengthy resume than an improbable oddity and a quirk of timing. For so many of Brown’s years at North Carolina the first time round, nobody in the ACC could beat Florida State. He was far from alone This season, at least, the Seminoles are playing along.

So if this is Brown’s final year in Chapel Hill, it may also be his last chance to check that elusive box. And it would be the second good thing to come out of Brown’s return this season. Because whatever happens next, there’s no question he was the right person in the right place at the right time to lead not only his team but the entire community through Tylee Craft’s gathering illness and sad passing. The results on the field have to be measured against that, disappointing as they may be.

It’s easy to say now that Brown should have gone out with Drake Maye, as close to on top as he was going to get, having done almost everything he came back to North Carolina to do. And despite the lack of ultimate success, and despite the struggles this season, and despite the chronic comic capades on defense, there’s absolutely no doubt he rebuilt the foundation of UNC football and set it on solid footing after losing its way during the late Larry Fedora years.

There’s a professionalism and respectability about the program that wasn’t there before. Full stop.

That also would have been true if Brown had stepped aside after last season and turned things over to the next generation, and at this point that seems like it would have been the smarter move. There’s some 20-20 hindsight in that, especially after the James Madison debacle and the Tar Heels sitting at 1-3 in the ACC, but it’s an opinion many reasonable people held at this time last season.

But life can work in mysterious ways, and it’s also incontrovertible that Brown led the Tar Heels through a difficult, emotional situation with grace and compassion, and if that seemed to be the case subjectively over the past two weeks it was objectively clear on the field against Virginia when his team played with the purpose and focus it very easily could have lacked.

With his experience and wisdom and — uncommon in his peers — humanity, Brown was able to do what football coaches often claim to do but rarely actually accomplish: He led a group of young men through the loss of one of their own, helping them grieve and heal by both influence and example.

So if this season hasn’t been what North Carolina wanted in terms of football, and if giving up 70 points to James Madison was the sign from the heavens that it was time to move on to the next thing, whatever that is, there’s an equally valid argument to be made that Brown was exactly where he needed to be when his players and the university needed him.

Some things are bigger than football.

And there’s still football to be played. The way the Tar Heels paid tribute to Craft’s memory is a win. The culmination of a four-decade quest to post one measly win over Florida State would go a long way toward polishing whatever the win-loss record ends up being.

And if this is indeed the end for Brown, there’s still a chance to go out on top with the next best thing to a championship: A home win over N.C. State that could — there’s an outside chance of this — keep the Wolfpack out of a bowl game.

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