Chansky’s Notebook: Passing Overnight – Chapelboro.com

On December 27, 2024By Littum

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This weekend marks the transition to another UNC football era.

It’s kind of sad how the Mack Brown eras pass Saturday night with the start of Bill Belichick’s attempt to finally awaken the so-called sleeping giant hiding among the pines at Kenan Stadium.

Brown’s two tenures at the helm of the Tar Heels ended the way they shouldn’t have, as the Belichick specter begins in Boston, where he headlined two decades of the New England Patriots’ reign over the National Football League.

The Tar Heels, Brown’s sixth and 16th UNC team over a 36-year span, will conclude their 2024 season at 11 a.m. at Red Sox baseball stadium. Freddie Kitchens is the one-time interim coach after Brown’s unceremonious firing on Dec. 1, while Belichick observes from the press box which players will be part of his 2025 college football debut.

Meanwhile, two hours later, Drake Maye continues his rookie NFL indoctrination as the 3-12 Patriots host the LA Chargers in famed Foxboro, the sleepy suburban town south of the city that became their home decades ago. If that game was on its usual Sunday, Belichick could be there to see Maye, who surely would have been at Fenway Park to cheer on his former Tar Heels trying to turn their 6-6 record to 7-6.

The fortuitous juxtaposition underscores what a seismic shift has occurred from one college Hall of Fame coach to another future NFL Hall inductee. Much of the area won’t even tune in to the college game, representing gross mismanagement of Brown’s forced retirement that could have been handled so much better.

That won’t be the case next fall, when Belichick tries to rapidly transform himself in the amateur ranks into what the pros looked like when he took over the Pats in 2000 and will be cheered and jeered by football fans across America. Some skeptics believe he won’t last long in the college game before returning to the pros now that his son Steve is in place as the heir apparent to his 72-year-old father, who has a guaranteed three-year deal at UNC.

Brown did not coach the bowl at the end of his first stint in Carolina. In 1997, after accepting the Texas job, defensive coordinator Carl Torbush led the Heels to a blowout of Virginia Tech in the Gator Bowl before being named the new head coach.

So in many ways, this bowl seems far less important with about 50 holdovers who will be on Belichick’s new roster, along with what could be dozens from the transfer portal. Brown has reportedly packed up and moved back to Austin, where he will raise money for the Longhorns when he should have been invited to do so at needier UNC.

Instead of an appreciative farewell, the school sent him madly off, when he could have been celebrated for twice making Carolina football relevant, if not revered.

Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications

Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including bestsellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to the WCHL for decades after making his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.

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