Our interview with Mack Brown
THE WEST ZONE message board | SHOP NOW: DEALS on CLEMSON apparel
The following interview originally ran on Tigerillustrated.com in October of 2016 following our interview with Mack Brown.
Timelines, stats and captions below have not been altered, as the article is presented in its original form from 2016.
Brown, now North Carolina's head football coach for a second stint, and Swinney square off as coaches for the first time this weekend when No. 1-ranked Clemson (4-0, 2-0) faces the Tar Heels (2-2, 1-0) in Chapel Hill, N.C.
************************************************
CLEMSON -– Mack Brown was all-in with Dabo Swinney long before it was cool.
After seven breathless and often sleepless weeks in 2008 as the head coach, Swinney was just trying to take a step back and figure it all out. So he decided to call up a few of the giants to see if one might allow him and his staff to come learn from the best.
ALSO SEE: Thursday Clemson Football Nuggets | Clemson's recruiting big board: defensive tackle | 4-star defensive end likes Clemson's winning ways | Clemson's verbal commitments | Clemson's junior commitments
Oklahoma and Texas were the giants of the day, model programs that boasted immense resources, abundant talent and cutting-edge ideas. The Sooners had amassed a 102-19 record over the previous nine seasons, the Longhorns an 88-15 record over the previous eight. Texas had won a national title in 2005, and Oklahoma claimed one in 2000 before playing for one on three other occasions.
Bob Stoops said no thanks, a response Swinney hasn’t forgotten. Brown said come on, a response Swinney hasn’t forgotten.
Brown, now an ESPN analyst who became good friends with Swinney since that three-day visit to Austin in the winter of 2009, will work Friday night’s game at Boston College. And his presence covering a program that has blossomed as one of college football’s prime powers is an opportune time to take a look back at that meeting of the minds as Swinney was trying to help an erratic, perpetually frustrating program gain a foothold.
“He doesn’t need anybody’s advice anymore,” Brown said. “He knows what he’s doing. He’s won at the highest level. He’s been to the mountaintop to play for that national championship game. And it’s just a matter of time before he goes back and wins it all.”
Immensely successful college coaches don’t let just anyone into their fortresses to exchange ideas.
In an interview earlier this week with Tigerillustrated.com, Brown pointed out some important connections that led him to accept Swinney’s request.
When he got the head job at North Carolina in 1988, Brown hired Dan Brooks away from Florida. Brooks spent six seasons in Chapel Hill before leaving for Tennessee, and he’s been with Swinney from the beginning.
Brown goes way back with trusted Swinney confidante Woody McCorvey, all the way to the start of McCorvey’s coaching career in 1972 at Tate High School in Pensacola, Fla. Brown also knew Brad Scott, who was then offensive line coach for Swinney.
But the most influential connection was Gene Stallings, who coached Swinney at Alabama and later made him an assistant coach. Brown and Stallings have been close for a long time, and Stallings’ word was all Brown needed to hear.
“I knew Coach Stallings loved him and respected him,” Brown said. “I didn’t know Dabo well but I knew he was an up-and-comer. You really respected that he walked on at Alabama and that he worked so hard to overcome the adversity that he had in his personal life to get a scholarship and make it work. And then Tommy Bowden was a friend of mine, and Tommy had talked to me about Dabo. He thought he was a young star.”
Consider the vast gap between the two programs at the time: Clemson had lost 10 games the previous two seasons, and Texas had lost eight games over the previous five. The Tigers were a yo-yo act that could beat just about anyone but also lose to just about anyone. A Top 10 preseason ranking in 2008 was blown to bits by Alabama, followed by ugly defeats to Maryland and Wake Forest that sealed Bowden’s demise. Four wins in six games were enough to get Swinney the job for good; four wins in six games in Austin at that time would leave the fans in despair.
Nevertheless, Brown gave his staff instructions before Swinney and his coaches arrived: “Be honest with them, give them what we’ve got.”
Clemson’s coaches spent about three days on the Texas campus, and Brown pointed out that his staff was able to gain some ideas from their visitors too. Swinney was looking for advice and wisdom in recruiting, staff scheduling, organization and how to manage time.
“Dabo is very unique with his passion,” Brown said. “And he had notebooks full of questions. And it was good for me to go back over why we were doing some of the things we were doing and what we thought. I enjoyed the visit with him. There were things our staff got from those guys on that staff that really helped us.”
Last December, as his team prepared for the Orange Bowl, Swinney recounted reaching out to several coaches and being spurned by all but one.
“I knew a couple coaches on the staff, and I really wasn’t expecting a lot from Mack as far as his time,” Swinney said. “So we load up and we go out there for about three days, and it was an awesome experience.
“I was hoping to get 30 minutes, 45 minutes with Mack and I kind of had a list of things I wanted to talk to him about. We spent about four hours, and I still have my Mack Brown file in my office.”
On top of that, Brown took the entire staff out for dinner and paid the tab.
“I thought it was only the right thing to do,” Brown said.
Seven years after that gathering at Texas, Brown traveled to Clemson to be the keynote speaker for Swinney’s annual All-In Ball last spring. Visiting in person, Brown was able to see the full-bodied fruition of the vision Swinney had way back when.
Brown continues to be amazed at Swinney’s energy, his passion and his positive attitude that rubs off on not just everyone in the program, but across the community.
Clemson, which once spent two decades searching for a 10-win season, is now making that accomplishment look easy with five of them in a row and a sixth seeming just about automatic with a 5-0 start. The Tigers are 51-8 since the start of the 2012 season, and they have won 22 of their last 23 games and 28 of 30.
Now, Swinney is one of the giants.
“What he has become is one of the best coaches in the country,” Brown said. “If you just look at his record over the last few years, it’s undeniable. Every year they’re a factor at the end. And if something is not working very well they fix it. You watch the Notre Dame game last year, they were in trouble but they had enough confidence to come back and win.
"Look at the national championship game -- I’m not sure if they had been healthy on defense that they wouldn’t have come back and won that one. And it was still a kickoff return, an onside kick and a wheel route that kept them from winning a national championship last year. And then the other night against Louisville, they’re in trouble and they’re not playing well in the third quarter. They just had that magic in the fourth quarter, that confidence, and they come back and win the game.
“The most impressive thing to me is that when they lose a lot of players, the old term about reloading and not rebuilding? Everybody talks about, ‘Well we’re so young.’ Well Clemson doesn’t talk about being young. They’re really young. They’re like Ohio State. That’s two of the teams that lost the most players to the NFL over the last couple of years and they don’t even blink. They just go back and act like they’re supposed to win again.”
Kind of like Texas did for so long under Brown. But after the Longhorns amassed a 101-16 record from 2001 to 2009, they went on a shocking tumble to mediocrity and posted a 30-21 record over the next four seasons.
Four years after Swinney sought the model program to learn from, Brown was out of a job. And the monstrous gap between the two programs still exists, just the other way around; Charlie Strong is fighting hard to keep his job in this, his third season guiding the Longhorns.
Oklahoma and Stoops took a dip as well, though not nearly as pronounced. The Sooners are losing big games with a greater frequency and haven’t returned to the national title game since losing to Florida in the 2008 BCS championship. Ugly losses to Houston and Ohio State in September left fans grumbling in Norman.
Swinney surely hasn’t forgotten about Stoops telling him no thanks back when he was a nobody. Brent Venables left Norman in 2012 and has become the premier defensive coordinator in college football, and the Tigers smoked the Sooners in back-to-back bowl games – including last year’s 37-17 trouncing with a trip to the national title game at stake.
Swinney made note of this during his All-In Ball introduction of Brown, telling the crowd that “77 points and a defensive coordinator later they don’t like us too much.”
How much has changed since Swinney took his coaches to Austin? Back then when Clemson won at Boston College, it seemed like a miracle.
In those days the Tigers were jittery and unpredictable and unsure of themselves. In these days they are a program in full, and Brown will get to witness that first-hand Friday night.
Game-week DEALS on officially-licensed CLEMSON apparel at the Tiger Fan Shop HERE!
