Mack Brown reveals his mindset ahead of initial reveal of College Football Playoff rankings

North Carolina is in prime position to compete for the ACC football title. At 7-1 and undefeated in conference play so far, the Tar Heels are not only a legitimate ACC title threat, but maybe even a College Football Playoff threat if they are able to pull off a win over Clemson (most likely) in the championship contest.

So Mack Brown and UNC have their destiny in front of them at the right time of year. And with the College Football Playoff top-25 about to be released for the first time this season, Brown was asked after the Heels’ most recent win if he’s excited to see where his team ranks, since they’ll surely make the cut.

Brown wasn’t terribly interested in all the outside chatter, but did note that the CFP rankings mean business and are a decent picture of where each team sits in the postseason race.

Here was the head coach’s full response on whether he’s looked at rankings or standings or even cares about them at all:

“No I haven’t. And I think we’ll talk about the Coastal again tomorrow. We’ll talk about the polls again tomorrow. And I really always thought in the media that it didn’t matter until the College Football polls came out, because that’s the resume for our team. It doesn’t matter till it’s over. I mean, nobody says ‘Where were you ranked the eighth week of the season?’ They say ‘Where are you ranked last year at the end?’ The beginning doesn’t matter, the end does matter.”

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It’s all about November onward for the Tar Heels now’s the time to take care of business.

“The only way we can win the coastal is keep winning. I am in the past sometimes. I’ve calculated it and said we’ll win here. And if we do this, let’s get better and win every game we can win. That’s what we need to do. So what I will tell them tomorrow is I don’t want to hear Coastal mentioned. I don’t want to hear ACC Championship mentioned and I don’t want to hear polls mentioned. Thank you for for getting us some recognition, thank you for playing so hard, thank you for making this ride so much fun. But let’s don’t be stupid. Let’s don’t talk about things that are very unimportant.

“What’s important is you guys that are hurt — get well. You guys behind them? Step up and let’s improve the things that we’re not doing well. Let’s be mature enough to say that we did these things well. We’re still not here. We’ve got to get these things fixed to get where we want to go. And that’ll make this journey fun.”

For North Carolina football, it’s time to get healthy and get serious, according to Mack Brown.