Mack Brown explains why Cam'ron Kelly did not play in bowl game

When North Carolina played the Holiday Bowl against Oregon, defensive back Cam’ron Kelly was not on the field.

The well-respected player had entered the portal in early December and recently committed to Virginia as a grad transfer. But it wasn’t his entering the portal that led to him not playing.

Tar Heels head coach Mack Brown addressed the reason why Kelly did not play in the game during a Monday press conference.

“I told the guys that you can’t go visit and miss a meeting or miss a practice,” Brown said. “He really felt like he needed to go look at different places and visit. I talked to Cam yesterday and he’s all excited about going to grad school at Virginia. The whole thing is kind of different. I told him I was pulling for him for every game but one.”

Kelly was a four-year contributor for North Carolina, including as a typical starter the past two seasons.

For his career, he notched 180 tackles, five interceptions and 12 passes defended.

Brown said this was the first cycle he’s ever had to deal with a portal/bowl game situation like this, and he would probably do things differently next year in order to give someone like Kelly a chance to suit up again.

“Probably next year, what we would do is try not to practice the first weekend that we did so that would be a chance for the guys in the portal to go look at a place because we’d never done this before,” Brown said. “I had practice and then told them they couldn’t go. We let them have an extra day off from the end of practice for Christmas. That was a chance that they can go visit some places. Then some guys are still visiting. I talked to a couple that were on visits this weekend. The portal didn’t open back up till now. So it’s closed after the bowl games, so it makes it difficult for them. We’ve got to do a better job of trying to help guys that are going in the portal find an opportunity to go visit that still want to play in the game.