CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina football coach Mack Brown got an almost inconceivable text message from his agent three weeks ago while playing golf with one of his grandchildren in Linville, a North Carolina mountain community.
UCLA and USC were making moves to leave the Pac-12 and join the Big Ten, a shocking departure that will occur in 2024 and break up their century-old affiliation with the West Coast league.
“I would’ve bet my life that would never happen,” Brown said Thursday at the ACC Kickoff preseason event, recalling the jarring moment the news hit him on the golf course.
College football has been rocked by conference realignment for another summer, with the bombshell Big 12 exit of Texas and Oklahoma for the SEC becoming the tipping point for the latest wave.
Brown, who turns 71 next month, spent 16 years as the coach at Texas, sandwiched around his two stints in charge of the Tar Heels, which cover 14 years and counting (1988-97, 2019-present).
His is a perspective earned across six decades in coaching, underlined by a national championship with the Longhorns in 2005 and College Football Hall of Fame induction in 2018. As something of a caretaker for the sport, he addressed the ACC’s league-wide concernsl.
The Big Ten and SEC will grow to 16-member conferences by 2025 as the Power Five bends toward the potential forming of two 20-team super leagues. A day after commissioner Jim Phillips said “all options are on the table” during his state of…
