North Carolina's Mack Brown Shares Plans for 2025 Amid Up-and-Down Season

The Tar Heels are 6–5 on the season ahead of the finale against rival NC State.

North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Mack Brown during warmups before a game against the Florida State Seminoles at Doak S. Campbell Stadium. / Robert Myers-Imagn Images

Mack Brown's second stint at North Carolina has been a bumpy ride, and the 2024 season has been a rollercoaster ride in particular. The Tar Heels' midseason swoon—a four-game losing streak that began with a stunning 70–50 loss to James Madison—put the veteran coach's future in question, but the 73-year-old continues to insist that he has no intentions of stepping down after the year.

"I'm not gonna think about retiring, I'm not going to talk about retiring," Brown said, per Inside Carolina. "I haven't changed that for six years. I learned that from Texas. And there will be a morning when I'll get up and I'll say, 'You know what? Somebody else should be leading this team. They're better than I am at this at this point.' And then I'll go do something else. But I've got way too much to do to be worried about next week. I'm trying to beat NC State."

Questions about a 73-year-old coach's future are natural, especially one who spent the better part of a decade out of coaching after his lengthy tenure at Texas. Those questions heated up after the JMU blowout, and the three additional losses that followed. To Brown's credit, UNC rebounded to win three straight games to reach bowl eligibility at 6–4, but took a rough 41–21 loss at Boston College on Saturday.

While Brown says he has no plans to step down, the upcoming rivalry game against NC State, which needs the win for its own bowl trip, looms large.

"You never talk to your athletic director until the year's over," Brown added during his media session. "Everybody always does that. My total focus is on NC State. What an awful thing to be talking about me when we just played a bad game and need to beat State."

Brown is 44–32 in his current tenure at North Carolina, after previously leading the Tar Heels from 1988 to '97. UNC went 9–5 with an ACC Coastal division title in 2022, the highwater mark for the program since he took back over ahead of the 2019 season.

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