So much has changed as the nation deals with mass shutdowns as a result of the coronavirus pandemic still affecting most aspects of life.

North Carolina’s football coaching staff not only didn’t have spring practice to learn more about their team, but they also haven’t seen any recruits in person for quite some time. It’s a reality shared by every other college athletics staff in the nation.

Getting around this as best they can, the UNC staff has zoomed into a new approach at building relationships with prospects and their families, and some elements of this new craze just may remain a part of the process, Mack Brown says.

The Tar Heels’ coach recently met with the media for a virtual press conference via the online meeting service Zoom, which is the same program the staff has used for much of their recruiting over the last two months.

In addition, recruiting for Brown may change because he's in the age bracket that has been hit the most by COVID-19, so how mght that affect him at least in the near future?

Here are the transcripts and clip sof what Brown had to say about recruiting virtually and how the process may change for good:

Q: You mentioned the virtual recruiting, are we at a point now where coaches will be signing guys that none of the staff has met personally? Evaluated on film certainly, is that where we are?

BROWN: “I don’t think so. I think we will have more meetings like people walking through grocery stores and such. You’ll be six feet apart, you won’t be hugging them, you won’t be shaking their hands, and I do see that going forward. When we get a vaccine, and I’m sure we will because there’s brilliant people working on it, and we all feel safer, when is the next pandemic, what’s the next virus that will hit and will we be ready for it? And I think our children and our grandchildren’s lives are going to be different moving forward than ours has been to this point, and I think recruiting will be different and people will just understand.

“I was thinking when we can get people back on campus, I was in my office yesterday walking around seeing if I had six people in there where would they sit? And what does that mean, and I’ve never thought about that before. And this all happened so fast, walking through, we’ve got some, like the defensive meeting room: I went in yesterday, and I haven’t been over there very much, there are still books that are open because coaches were told to leave. They were on spring break and they came back and couldn’t get in to get their stuff.

“So this has all happened so fast for us that the people that have been the most creative, the people that have been most positive, and the people that have been able to work through this are going to be the ones that come out on the other side better.

“I do think we’ll do more online stuff, I do think we’ll probably be showing prospects a tour of the facility before they ever come to see if they want to come. And we weren’t doing that before. And I do think the NCAA has done a good job of looking at all the different changes in the rules and they’re probably going to have to look at more, because should we be zooming more with kids? The more we can communicate with kids and families the better they know us the better we know them, and if travel is going to change, then we’re going to have to have more communication online before they decide they even want to come or not.

“So, I do think that there’ll be a lot of changes coming up. There’s one rule that I didn’t like that Coach Hess, our strength coach, can demonstrate for our players but we can’t watch them work out. The NCAA said that would mean that they would feel like they had to be there and these are voluntary workouts. Well, we lost a player because he was working out on his own and maybe didn’t stretch as well.

“So I with that we could watch them work out. They (players) don’t have to let us, it’s still voluntary, but it seems better to me that if a trainer is watching the kids work out he can say, ‘slow down,’ or if they can stretch and we can watch them stretch with our strength staff, then they’re more ready to go.”

Q: Thoughts on moving to virtual recruiting over zoom permanently after the pandemic ends?

BROWN: "I think that it'll happen more because we're understanding that it works. I don't think we can take away the need for the coach to walk in to the high school and see the environment and talk to the guidance counselor and talk to the principal and talk to the teachers because a lot of times they don't want to put that information in writing and they'd rather tell you face-to-face. I don't see us taking away the ability to go see them in their homes and doing that.

“What I do see is, even with us, if it's a Saturday in the spring and we have a staff meeting, I think we can very easily have it over Zoom and let the coaches be out-of-town or let them stay at home with their families and have an hour staff meeting on Zoom instead of making them come to the office or on Sunday. I do think, like we mentioned earlier, I do think we'll be Zooming with prospects to see them and get to know them a little bit and them get to know us before they come to campus because we may say if you're wanting to come in and see me on a Sunday and I get on Zoom with you and your family and I don't like you or you don't like me, then we can cancel the Sunday meeting instead of having to go and set with them for an hour and a half or two and say this isn't going to work.

“So, I think all of us will be looking at more creative ways to use the virtual tours, to use the interaction. I've even thought that we have our morning practice. If a guy has a lab at night, maybe he gets on a Zoom call with his coach from four to five and he doesn't have to run over if he needs to be studying or if he needs to eat and he doesn't have time to do all that. I do think they're are a lot of things that will come out of this that are more creative than the old way we were doing things."