UNC’s Mack Brown fought the NCAA and Tez Walker won
North Carolina coach Mack Brown needed to talk to Tez Walker two Thursdays ago, but the Tar Heels receiver wasn’t answering the phone. After multiple tries, Walker finally pressed Accept.
“You need to come see me,” Brown said.
Walker hadn’t answered initially because he was in the middle of a class. “I can’t leave class,” Walker told his coach.
Brown had news, and he needed to tell Walker in person. So for the first time in his coaching career, Brown asked a player to duck out of a class. “Trust me,” Brown told Walker. “You’ll be good.”
You’ve probably seen the video of what happened next. After multiple times delivering the bad news that the NCAA had denied Walker’s eligibility waiver, Brown finally got to deliver the good news that Walker could play this season.
That hug marked the end of an eligibility odyssey that took months and the efforts of North Carolina’s athletic administration, North Carolina’s university administration and the state’s attorney general to convince the NCAA that Walker should be allowed to play now. It also required Brown to do something he’d rarely done in four decades as a college head coach. The consummate politician — the guy who rarely says anything controversial — had publicly ripped the governing body of college sports. He hadn’t couched his criticism. He hadn’t qualified it. He had said “shame on the NCAA,” and had he meant it with every fiber of his being.
Brown jokes that he’s old enough now that he can say anything that’s on his mind and get away with it. He’s not wrong. But he’s also banked enough goodwill that when he speaks that directly, it gets everyone’s attention.
He understood that he’d be called a hypocrite* because he’d heartily encouraged the passage of stricter transfer waiver guidelines. He didn’t care. The circumstances of Walker’s particular case, in Brown’s mind, merited a waiver. Walker, from Charlotte, had started his college life at North Carolina Central. He intended to start his football career there, but the pandemic wiped out what would have been his freshman season. When North Carolina Central opted not to play in spring 2021 — and fall 2021 wasn’t a sure thing, either — Walker went to Kent State. He played two seasons there. Then, after Golden Flashes head coach Sean Lewis left to be Colorado’s offensive coordinator, Walker joined a host of his teammates in the transfer portal. His argument to the NCAA was that he shouldn’t be treated as a two-time transfer because circumstances outside everyone’s control kept him from playing at North Carolina Central.
*I was one of the people who pointed out how vocal Brown had been about tightening those transfer policies. He stands by both stances, saying that Walker’s case was “common sense” and that this is a very different case than a player who jumps schools three or four times for reasons that aren’t sound.
The NCAA was unmoved, and request after request was denied. Finally, after North Carolina had convened many of its power brokers to examine all options — including suing the NCAA — the NCAA relented. The organization released a statement that it had received “new information” that changed the situation and caused the waiver to be granted. Not long after, North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham released a statement that said, in not so many words, that there was no new information.
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Brown has no regrets about how hard he went at the NCAA. He’d do it again. “I felt like he was totally wronged,” Brown said on Tuesday’s edition of Andy Staples On3. “This was a no-brainer.” And it’s not personal, he said. “I wasn’t against the NCAA. I wasn’t trying to embarrass them. I wasn’t really trying to call them out,” he said. “I was just trying to say ‘This isn’t fair, so let’s make it fair.”
Brown and company didn’t care why the NCAA caved at that point. They just celebrated that Walker could play. When Walker was denied in the season’s early weeks, Brown had asked Walker what he wanted to do. Did he want to prepare for the NFL draft? Did he want to practice with the Tar Heels? Walker said he wanted to practice, and he wanted to play on the scout team — running the other teams’ plays so that the defense could prepare. Walker also asked if he could play on the special teams scout units. That way, he could be the most helpful to the team even if he couldn’t play this season.
Because Walker had been running Syracuse’s plays all week in practice, North Carolina receivers coach Lonnie Galloway took Walker aside that Thursday and taught him as much as he could of the Tar Heel’s offensive game plan against the Orange. Brown decided it would be unfair to the receivers who had been practicing with the offense to start Walker. But two series into the game that Saturday, Brown said, “Come on, man. Put him in the game.”
Walker wound up catching six passes for 43 yards in North Carolina’s 40-7 win. After a week of practicing with the first team, Walker showed what he’s truly capable of by catching six passes for 132 yards and three touchdowns in Saturday’s 41-31 win against Miami.
“With a full week, he’s just settled down,” Brown said. “He’s just playing now and having fun.”
The Tar Heels are 6-0 with an eye on an ACC title and possibly more. With Walker playing, they’re going to have a lot more fun.
And Brown is fine that he had to go anti-establishment to help make it happen. He’d do it again. “I’m always trying to say the right things,” Brown said. “But I thought the NCAA was wrong. I thought they were totally wrong and hurting a young man’s life. And I felt like for our players, for our parents, and for Tez and his family — who could not stand up for themselves — that I had to do it.”