Mack Brown values spot in CFP rankings, earned recognition

North Carolina coach Mack Brown normally doesn’t concern himself with rankings, but this year’s first College Football Playoff top 25 is different. With the first rankings of the 2022 season announced Tuesday, the Tar Heels came in at No. 17.

In his Wednesday press conference, Brown talked about how this year’s UNC team has “earned” that ranking as opposed to some of its previous seasons.

“I told them that when we were ranked fifth in the country during the COVID year we didn’t earn it,” he said. “We didn’t deserve it. I told ’em when we were ranked in the top 10 last year before the season, we didn’t deserve it. We hadn’t played any games. We didn’t earn it and I don’t like that. I feel very uncomfortable with a team being applauded without doing anything.

“They’ve earned this. They worked really, really hard to go from nowhere to here and the story’s not over. You’ve got to finish the story, but I told them, ‘Thank you and congratulations, because you have earned this.’ I really feel like it’s the first time since we’ve been here that we earned something nationally.”

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As happy as Mack Brown is about the initial College Football Playoff ranking, though, he wants to see North Carolina continue to climb. The Tar Heels currently sit at 7-1 and in first place of the ACC Coastal division with a chance to play for a conference championship, but he knows how quickly that can change.

He pointed to the 2020 season when UNC finished 8-4 and made an Orange Bowl appearance as an example of what can happen if they don’t keep their focus down the stretch.

“The Orange Bowl team earned a lot of stuff, but when we lost our players and lost to A&M we were 18th or something (at the end of the season),” he said. “We ended up dropping. But that team lost a couple of games that we had a chance to win that were close games on the road. So this team to this point has earned the right to be 17th based on all the time and people and analytics and stats that people put into who’s the best teams, so I’m proud of that for them. I told them, ‘The only way that stays is if you keep playing good. You’ve got to win. If you win, you keep going up and if you lose you drop out.’ So I like this team so much and these kids so much that I have been brutally honest with them.”

As UNC prepares for the final stretch of the season, it has two games remaining against ranked foes in NC State and Wake Forest. But Mack Brown is doing his best to ensure they keep the end goal in mind, and will focus only on what’s next beginning with Virginia at noon ET on Saturday on the road.

“I’ve told ’em, ‘We don’t need to talk about this,'” Brown said. “We don’t even mention the Coastal (division). We don’t even mention the conference championship because you’ve got to win to get to that point. If you win enough to clinch it, then you can talk about it. …I told ’em the only poll that matters is the one at the end of the year that we all look back on. That’s the only one that lasts. The rest of ’em go away. Ten years from now when they ask you, you’ll be able to say, ‘Yes, our team was rated this at the end of the year.'”