Shortly after Mack Brown was hired at the University of Texas, he was saved from the first controversy of his career at young Longhorn by the most unlikely of allies.
In 1998, Brown and longtime Texas A&M coach RC Slocum were invited to a public event in San Antonio, along with former Texas A&M and Alabama coach Gene Stallings.
Both Slocum and Stallings were well aware of the importance of hand signals in Texas college football. Brown, a Tennessee native who had just arrived from North Carolina, had a quick lesson.
“I didn’t know much about the history of the two places, and a fan came over and stood between the three of us and said, ‘Let’s take a picture,'” Brown recently told ESPN. “He held up his thumb, RC and Coach Stallings too. So I grabbed mine. RC grabbed it, threw it on the floor and said, ‘Boy, are you going to get fired before you even play a game if you play need to learn very quickly that you hook them, you don’t make them gig ‘. “
For Brown, it was the beginning of what would be a very cordial relationship with a normally hostile neighbor. So when North Carolina faces Texas A&M in its first appearance at the Capital One Orange Bowl on Saturday (8 pm, ESPN / ESPN App), Brown won’t see red when he looks across the field and turns brown. In a sport where fans often wish the worst for their enemies, Brown has always kindly killed them.
“I was never a guy who hated our rivals,” said Brown. “I always liked our rivals. These are two major programs in a state that cares about football, perhaps more than any other state in the country. It is because it is like a religion, and both programs are very good. never say anything bad about Texas A&M. “
Brown announced his arrival in the rivalry with a 26-24 defeat of No. 6 Aggies in 1998. Over the final 14 years of the series before Texas A&M left for the SEC, Brown beat the Aggies 10 times, going 4- 1 against Slocum, 3-2 against Dennis Franchione and 3-1 against Mike Sherman, including the final 27-25 victory in 2011.
“Mack saw rivalries as a matter of pride,” said Ricky Williams, who won the Heisman Trophy in Brown’s first season in Austin, after running 259 yards in that frustrating victory over A&M. “So the idea of defeating the Aggies was to show that we are the best team in Texas. He saw those great games as great opportunities for us.”
Brown never fired, fired insults or invented tricks to refer to A&M. His magnetic charm that remade the Texas recruiting scene also used to make it look like he was rooting for the Aggies – unlike a game, of course.
“We don’t need A&M to have a bad team,” Brown told Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman before his first fight against the Aggies in 1998. “If we both go 6-4 getting into this game, that would be no help at all. us. “
Brown insists that none of this is a simulation, another field for recruiting an astute coach. He and Slocum had been good friends since he was an assistant to one of Slocum’s good friends, Donnie Duncan, in Iowa from 1979 to ’81. Brown’s long-time offensive coordinator, Greg Davis, who worked for Brown in Tulane and Texas, got his first university job at Texas A&M at Slocum’s request.
“I was with [Brown] 18 years old, and it was never about him against RC or him against anyone, “said Davis.” It was obviously an important ball game. But it was never a personal agreement with him. “
Brown even allowed Slocum to organize a tour of the Texas facility for A&M employees when Slocum felt that the Aggies were falling behind in the arms race. There has always been mutual respect for one another and for programs.
“It was very different from the Oklahoma rivalry,” said Brown last week. “Oklahoma’s rivalry was state against state. The A&M rivalry was family against family. They were all Texans, and even in the game you would see fans scattered with different colors and families sitting together. I used to sit as a kid and watch Texas and Texas A&M [on TV]. He singled out high school and high school football coaches in the state of Texas for everyone in the country. “
Dave South called Texas A&M football, basketball and baseball games for 33 years and was honored in 2018 with the National Football Foundation’s Chris Schenkel Award for excellence in broadcasting. While in New York for induction, he met Brown, who was being inducted into the NFF Hall of Fame the same year, and he was surprised by Brown’s revelation when he performed.
“I know who you are,” said Brown to South. “When I was traveling, often when we didn’t have a game or we played in the afternoon and you played at night, I heard you.”
South said Brown had nothing but kind words for his former enemy.
“When the game was over, the game was over,” said South. “He highly praised A&M and the rivalry.”
But nothing showed Brown’s true respect for the Aggies as his last press conference when he resigned in Texas in December 2013, when Brown had time to remember the collapse of Aggie’s campfire in 1999, which killed 12 students.
After Brown’s initial statement, a reporter asked if there was anything he would have changed in his 16 years in Austin. He first said that he would give anything to get Cole Pittman back, referring to the UT defensive equipment that died in a car accident in 2001. Then came an extraordinary moment of improvisation for a Texas technician who was passing by one of the worst professional days of his career.
“And I would like the fire [collapse] it didn’t happen at A&M, “he said.” Those are two horrible things in my life that I will never forget. Playing A&M on Thanksgiving, I thought of families. … When you lose your children, there is nothing worse than that in the world. I think about it every Thanksgiving because there are 12 families that don’t have a good Thanksgiving Day. It never goes away. “
At the Orange Bowl press conference, he again vividly recalled the week of the tragedy.
“I thought we probably shouldn’t be playing that game,” he said. “I told RC, we will do whatever they want. Not only did we play, but I think we were 16-0 ahead at halftime, [and] they came back and beat us 21 to 16 at the very end. I’m not sure if it wasn’t better for them to have won that game. “
Davis remembers Brown being deeply affected.
“He was shaken by the fire,” said Davis. “In fact, we made a blood donation in Austin, at the football office, and most of the coaches donated blood.”
For Brown, the tragedy was the prospect of what a rivalry really meant.
“I thought the RC handled the situation better than anyone could,” he told ESPN last week. “We did the memorial with many students and fans of Texas A&M, which was a night that I will remember for the rest of my life. Until the game, our band playing ‘Amazing Grace’ and everyone in that whole stadium of mourning for those families … That’s when you know it’s much bigger than a football game. “
There is no doubt that Brown wants to beat A&M to put the finishing touches on a remarkable turnaround season in North Carolina, which is 8-3 after 2-9 two years before Brown’s arrival.
Williams said Brown will sell this as another important step for North Carolina, “because of the success that A&M has had, because they are from the powerful SEC,” he said. “When it’s a primetime ball game, he knows it’s a great opportunity for his program to take it to the next level.”
“I’m sure he is excited because he knows what kind of program [A&M has] had historically and the work that Jimbo [Fisher] is doing, “added Davis.” But it is an emotion. It is not a revenge deal at all or anything like that. I certainly don’t think he’s going to approach it any differently than if he were playing anyone else in terms of the old Aggies or whatever. “
And no matter how many cool words Brown says about the Aggies, there is no doubt that they want to beat him too. But the absence of rivalry may have even illuminated Brown’s brilliant words even more. Good luck getting him to say something else.
“Texas A&M is one of the best programs in the country and I always love playing it at College Station,” he said. “These fans are unbelievable. The place is as loud as any place I have ever been to train. The loyalty of these fans is just incredible to me.”