There's a near 100 percent chance you're not reading this column today if not for Mack Brown.
Like scores of others born around the same time and place, Mack's revival of the Texas football program ignited a lifelong love affair with college football that, now in the second half of my second decade, so far I've been able to make a career out of. I still remember being out in public and hearing Bill Schoening's call of Ricky Williams's FBS-record breaking run against Texas A&M in 1998. Wow, 10-year-old me thought as I saw the adults around me react, this is a big deal. That doesn't happen without Mack.
Within a few years, I declined to take a date to my high school's homecoming dance because it would've required missing the second half of the Red River Shootout. A few years after that, I was a student assistant in the media relations department for the Texas football program, where Mack and I were on a first name basis, or as much as we could be considering he was one of the most powerful men in college football and I was a 20-year-old trying to not flunk out of the University of Texas because I spent all my time with the football program.
Everything you've heard about Mack's people skills is true. The man is a first ballot Hall of Famer in that department. One interaction stands out above the others. Mack was asked about moving the Red River game out of the Cotton Bowl, a topic within the program that's nearly as old as the Cotton Bowl itself. "I'm not the right person to ask. You should ask Darrell Royal or Bill Little," Brown said, referring to Texas's legendary coach and equally legendary former SID, neither of whom are still with us. "They've been with the program much longer than I have. Their opinion matters much more than mine."
That answer stunned me. Mack had been the head coach at Texas for a decade by then, with a national championship trophy in the case and a Hall of Fame legacy secure. More importantly, he'd been living and breathing Longhorn football 24/7 for more than 10 years by that point, he practically was Texas football to most people. To have the humility to deflect to his elders on such a topic... he might've been the only person in the world with the grace to deflect in that moment.
Of course, Mack's humility existed in parallel with his pride, and the latter got the best of him at times. His pride detonated Texas's opportunity to hire Nick Saban in 2013, and his pride led to the circumstances around his exit from North Carolina today. After stating multiple times that he intends to return next season over the past two weeks, UNC removed that possibility as an opportunity.
"Director of Athletics Bubba Cunningham on Monday informed Brown, who coached UNC from 1988-97 and then returned to Chapel Hill in Nov., 2018, that he will not return as head coach," the school announced Tuesday.
An aged man clinging to power is a tale as old as time, but Brown should be remembered for a lifetime dedicated to college football and a Hall of Fame career that resulted from that.
The grandson, son and brother of coaches, Mack joined the family business as a student at Florida State. By 31, he was the head coach at Appalachian State. He took Tulane from 1-10 to 6-6 in three years' time, in an age when the transfer portal was a concept that only existed on Star Trek. He lifted North Carolina into the AP Top 5, which brought him to Texas and into one unsuspecting young man's life.
At Texas, Mack revolutionized college football by turning recruiting into a year-round sport. His aggression on the trail ended Texas A&M's reign over the Lone Star State and pushed RC Slocum out of a job. Brown's legendary people skills brought a roster of future Pro Bowlers to Austin and created a laundry list of legendary moments. Among them:
-- Ricky's aforementioned 1998 Heisman run
-- Being the only team in a 75-game stretch to win at Nebraska's Memorial Stadium, and doing so twice
-- Beating Michigan in Texas's first Rose Bowl appearance
-- Becoming the first team to defeat Ohio State in the Horseshoe at night
-- Dethroning USC in what stands today as the most-watched college football game ever
-- Countless impossible comebacks against Oklahoma State
-- Winning the "final" game of the Texas A&M rivalry
Brown's greatest moment in coaching came minutes after his greatest victory, another stunning moment of grace and humility in a moment that called for neither.
"I don't want this to be the best thing that's ever happened in your life," Mack told his 2005 Texas team after beating 2-time defending national champion USC in a game watched by 35 million people. "When you're 54, I don't want you to say, 'Winning a football game's the best thing that's ever happened in my life.'... You promise me, if you've got enough about you to win a national championship, you've got enough about you to be a great citizen, a great role model, a great father, and a great leader in your family. That’s what we’re looking for when you get out of here. That’s what we want.”
What a legacy, to win the greatest game in the history of the sport, and then drop more wisdom and perspective than King Solomon did in the entire book of Proverbs minutes afterward.
Mack Brown spent more than 50 years in college football, along the way winning 288 games, one national championship, and sent dozens of players into the NFL. Inspiring one nerd from the suburbs to pursue a career in college football ranks somewhere between 500th and 10,000th on his list of accomplishments, but it's first on mine.