The Great Wall of Mack Brown is under construction in the Old North State, and its growing effect is helping North Carolina keep many of the top high school football prospects from leaving for other parts of the country for their college experiences.
Finding football refuge elsewhere has been a fairly common deal since Brown left UNC more than two decades ago. In the 1990s, he built a fence around the state and brought many top players to Chapel Hill eventually putting together consecutive top-10 finishes in 1996 and 1997.
Brown has been back for less than 18 months and he’s doing it again. UNC currently has the No. 3 class in the nation for 2021. Of UNC’s 14 committed prospects, 13 are from the Tar Heels’ backyard. Six have 4-star ratings and nine are among the top 18 players in North Carolina. Amazingly, eight of the other nine in that group remain undecided and several could end up in Chapel Hill, too.
Furthermore, all 13 in-state commits are among the top 42 prospects in one of the more talent-rich states in the nation.
“He’s done a phenomenal job right now,” Rivals.com recruiting analyst Adam Friedman said. “Just looking down the list of North Carolina state rankings and I’m seeing a number of UNC commits here in the top 20, top 15 and top 10, and (there’s) a chance for many of the uncommitted players to end up signing with UNC as well.
“So, whatever they’re doing over there right now is certainly attracting top talent, and I think a lot of what the current commits are doing to recruit some of these uncommitted players has a lot to do with the Tar Heels being able to build a fence around the state.”
One of UNC’s more recent commits, 3-star linebacker Ra Ra Dillworth, chose Brown’s program over Alabama. Proximity matters to Dillworth, but Carolina’s direction and who’s at the top also played huge roles in his choice.
"I picked the Tar Heels because it felt like home. It is home actually," Dillworth said. "I know I can get developed there… (Brown is) a Hall of Fame coach. He knows a lot about the game, and I feel like he can help me to become one of the greats that has ever been through North Carolina.
“I feel most comfortable at North Carolina because I believe in him and my parents believe in him."
Best of both worlds if looking at what Dillworth said from a UNC perspective: Staying home matters and playing for someone he truly believes will get the most out of him matters, too.
Chazz Surratt arrived at UNC a ballyhooed recruit under Larry Fedora. He was a 4-star quarterback and spent his first three seasons there before switching to linebacker at around the time Brown was hired.
Surratt has seen firsthand how things have quickly shifted, as UNC isn’t like UNC was not too long ago.
“The whole environment's changed since Mack Brown has come,” he said. “And the upgrades are just another thing to it.”
The upgrades have Brown’s fingerprints all over them. And they’ve been considerable.
The locker room was completely rebuilt and is state-of-the art now. The players’ lounge was fully renovated. The weight room had significant changes made and the playing surface at Kenan Stadium went from grass to AstroTurf. That was before the Tar Heels even played a game.
The Kenan Football Center has undergone huge changes during the coronavirus shutdown and the program’s social media presence is off the charts. Brown continues incorporating former Tar Heels, especially those who played in the NFL, to speak on behalf of the program and the academics of the school, as he’s pushing the slogan “40-Year Decision.”
And there’s more to come.
UNC holds a perception as a basketball school, but football has had some nice runs in the past and is positioned in the middle of a fertile state giving Brown and Carolina a chance to become something special again without having to leave the state for most of its players.
“When Coach Brown first came here, he made it a goal that he wanted to establish dominance in the state as far as recruiting goes,” said UNC quarterback Sam Howell, who is from Indian Trail, NC, and flipped from Florida State to UNC after Brown was hired.
“Our coaching staff works so hard recruiting. And they’ve done a really good job. I think for us to have a really good program, we need to get the best kids in the state. There’s some really good players in the state of North Carolina. Just to establish that type of dominance in recruiting has been really good for us, and it’ll keep going in the future.”
Clearly, Brown’s philosophy differs from his predecessor, as Larry Fedora didn’t do too well in-state but also didn’t make it a major priority.
In Fedora’s six full recruiting cycles, from 2013 through 2018, he signed 126 prospects, but just 39 were from North Carolina. That’s 30.9 percent.
Brown, however, is in his second full cycle and has either signed or gained verbal commitments from 39 prospects, 27 are from North Carolina, which is 69.2 percent.
Perhaps the NCAA cloud hurt Fedora in a state where most people were familiar with what was regularly in the news, and conversely not having a cloud hanging over has helped Brown. But it goes deeper than that. Boots on the ground always matter in recruiting.
“We had a great relationship with the high school coaches when we left here, and that’s something…,” Brown said. “Our team was probably 90-plus percent from the state of North Carolina when we left.”
And the Tar Heels won with homegrown kids, but they haven’t won much since Brown left following the 1997 season. Since, UNC has fielded some of the worst teams in program history, endured an embarrassing NCAA probation period and then took a fly on a new-wave style under Fedora that flared up in 2015 to the tune of 11 wins, but proved unsustainable.
So, one of the first things Brown promised upon his return was that one of his coaches would walk the halls of every high school in the state before fall camp opened in 2019. Numerous high school coaches told THI they hadn’t seen a UNC assistant at their schools in years. They have now.
But it’s not just visiting players and bringing in a lot of bells and whistles, the program needed substance, too. Reeling in the top prospects in the state usually means beating out highly successful programs that can sell the entire package and unquestioned football cultures. Clemson has historically done well in North Carolina, as has Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia Tech and some others.
Brown has a strong pitch that is part of the whole package.
“You want to go to school where your parents and your high school coach can see you play, your friends can see you play,” he said. “You want to go to school where when you get through you can get a job in an area where you’ve been popular and made a name for yourself on the football field.
“So, it’s really, really important for their futures that if they want to build a life in this state go to the University of North Carolina.”
And it helps when those in-state kids are pretty good at football, too.
“We’re going to win with a large majority of players from this state,” Brown said. “We did it last time and that will be our plan this time.”
So far, he’s doing that.
The Tar Heels were just 7-6 last fall, but the losses were by a combined 24 points and they clearly improved as the season went on. That’s a dramatic shift from five total wins over Fedora’s last two seasons.
The Great Wall of Mack Brown is becoming a reality, one highly regarded player at a time.
