Why Mack Brown was so outspoken about the eligibility of Tez Walker

There’s no question that North Carolina head coach Mack Brown went to bat for wide receiver Tez Walker as he faced issues regarding his eligibility upon transferring to UNC at the start of the college football season.

Brown was very outspoken about the situation and seemingly did everything he could to help Walker achieve eligibility, and after missing the first four weeks of the season, his waiver was approved and he was able to officially suit up for the Tar Heels.

On3’s Andy Staples recently had a conversation with Brown, asking him if it was hard to be as outspoken as he was regarding the situation contrary to the more reserved nature we’ve been accustomed to seeing from him over the years.

“I felt like my job is to treat these players like I would expect my son or my daughter to be treated, and I told the guys if you mess up, my sons and my daughters mess up, they get consequences,” Brown said. “And I want them punished because I want them to learn from it, so that would be the same. But if you’re wronged, and in this case Andy I felt like he was totally wronged, this was a no brainer, he didn’t play at one school.”

Walker spent his freshman season at NC Central, transferring to Kent State following his first season after it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And after two seasons with the Golden Flashes, he decided to return to the state of North Carolina in order to be closer home and his sick grandmother.

Brown like many others believed Walker had every right to play this season despite transferring twice, which definitely received some pushback from some people, including Staples, following his previous comments against excessive movement in the transfer portal.

“He didn’t play, he practiced 15 times, they weren’t gonna play at North Carolina Central so this was not a double transfer. And then people would say well you were one of the ones saying there’s too many transfers, absolutely. But there’s a difference in common sense, and I’m not a guy who wants to see guys transferring four times, three times for no reason because they got mad one morning, they got up and transferred. That’s not healthy for kids,” Brown explained. “But I also thought that when everybody was transferring it wasn’t right and there was no common sense, but let’s don’t go now to nobody transfers and there’s no common sense.”

Walker seemed to be transferring for all the right reasons, which Brown believed should override the NCAA’s rules.

“We’ve got to put common sense into this, and this young man had so many reasons that it was okay that that’s why unlike I normally do, I’m always trying to say the right things, but I thought the NCAA was wrong,” Brown said. “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.”

Brown and the university’s process worked, as Walker made his North Carolina debut two weeks ago versus Syracuse after getting his waiver request approved, which he followed with a breakout, three-touchdown performance against Miami this past weekend.

UNC and the NCAA seemed to be butting heads over the situation for a long time, but Brown gave them credit for making the right decision in his eyes at the end of the day.

“And I wasn’t against the NCAA, I wasn’t trying to embarrass them, I wasn’t really trying to call them out, I was just trying to say this isn’t fair. So let’s make it fair, come on people let’s treat this young guy right and to their credit they looked at it again and changed the direction and made him elgible. So I applaud them for that,” Brown concluded.