North Carolina's Odd Football Recruiting Uprising Deserves More Attention

After spending five years on TV with ESPN after his extremely successful 15-year stint at Texas, Mack Brown came out of retirement at age 66 to coach at North Carolina, where he was initially in charge from 1988 to 1997.

Rather than get exposed as a football dinosaur who should have stayed in the broadcast booth, Brown helped the Tar Heels win a bowl game in his first season, and his recruiting wizardry has landed the Tar Heels the No. 2 recruiting class in 2021, with only Ohio State ahead of them.

Many coaches who were at the helm of blue blood teams have returned to the college ranks at lower-tier programs, but their name value alone isn't enough to pull in big-name recruits. Brown, on the other hand, has done a masterful job of in-state recruiting, as 12 of North Carolina's top 25 recruits have already committed to the Tar Heels, with at least three more expected to link up with them in Chapel Hill.

When you pair the incoming freshman class with a highly-successful Air Raid offense that allowed a true freshman quarterback in Sam Howell to throw 38 touchdowns against seven interceptions, the Tar Heels look like the favorite to win the ACC Coastal Division in 2020.

Brown has breathed new life into a program that looked dead in the water with Larry Fedora at the helm. This could help the Tar Heels challenge for the ACC not only during his tenure, but for years to come.