Expectations Nothing New For Mack Brown

Brown on Miami: "I love these games"

North Carolina is playing No. 9 Miami on the road with a chance to prove it’s the third-best team in the ACC, behind Clemson and Notre Dame, who will be playing in the ACC title game and possibly the College Football Playoff. That leaves a potential Orange Bowl berth for the winner of UNC-Miami.

Coach Mack Brown doesn’t sound like he’s being consumed by the pressure of the high stakes, though.

“I love these games,” he said. “These games are a lot more fun than the ones you're supposed to win, because the ones you’re supposed to win, everybody expects you to win, and when you do, everybody says, ‘Aw, they were supposed to beat them.’ These are fun challenges.”

He also knows that if the Tar Heels do win, it’s not a destination but just another landmark on the journey.

“What I did learn is if you beat Miami, well now you’ve got to win all of them,” he said. “If you can beat Miami, you can beat everybody. It never goes away. It’s always next and next and next. First, you’ve got to win at home, and then people say you can’t win on the road. Then you win on the road and they say you can’t beat a top 25 team. When you do that, they say you can’t beat a top 10 team. Then you’ve got to do that and then you’ve got to win a championship—so you’ve got to win all of the games. Until you do that, people are never happy. And I learned at Texas, as soon as you do that, then you’ve got to do it again, and again. So you try to do the best you can do and not worry about all the other stuff or the perception.”