Mack Brown shares emotional story on how coaches can help improve mental health of athletes

Mack Brown coached for a long time and he learned a lot about mental health, especially the mental health of his players. How important is it?

There might not be a more important thing to focus on if you’re a head coach. With 100, give or take, players on a football team, it’s a lot of minds to focus on and take care of.

Everyone battles their own demons and Brown certainly has seen his fair share of tragedy and triumph. So he made a plea to all coaches: pay attention to mental health.

“I remember Billy Graham saying that a coach can change more lives in a year than the average person changes in a lifetime,” Brown said on the More Than The Scoreboard Podcast. “And that’s so true. We have a home up in the mountains of North Carolina. One of our friends had a son that was a freshman at Appalachian State and actually shot himself and killed himself. So (this is) the first year we were at North Carolina, so we jumped in the car and we ran back to the school. We just met these kids, and they’d come off of a two win season, a three win season, so they weren’t feeling good about themselves. 

“And we had a team meeting and we said, for all the coaches out there, we said, hey, we just had a friend and have a son that shot himself. I’m not a doctor, I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know what to tell you, other than it’s really selfish and it’s not fair to those parents. It’s not fair to the friends. So if any of you are having bad tendencies about hurting yourself or taking your life, man, come and see us and we’ll get you help. We’ll get you up fast. And it got real quiet.”

Mack Brown puts mental health above all

Brown continued his emotional story about checking in on players. He further explained his point about mental health being the most important thing a coach can do for his team.

“We went upstairs and a guy named Jake Lawler, and it’s been reported by ESPN, so I’m not using his name here, he came upstairs and said, Coach, I was on the bridge last night, and I was thinking about jumping, and you just, you just got my attention, man, I need help, I need help,” Brown said. “So you coaches out there, what you say is very, very powerful to these young people, and you don’t know what they’re dealing with at home. We never do, and you don’t know what they’re dealing with in their lives. So even if you get on them, I would never let a young person leave the building or the locker room after a practice, if we had really gotten on him without sitting down with him and making sure he was okay.” 

College athletes have a tremendous amount of pressure, especially in the days of NIL. As Brown pointed out, they’re practically paid professionals.

“Because there’s a tremendous amount of pressure on these young people, and they all want to play,” Brown said. “If they’re not playing, there’s pressure. They all want to be in the NFL, and if they’re not playing in college, they’re sure not going to play in the NFL. And they’ve got mom and dad that are saying, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you playing? They’ve got an agent saying, man, I can’t get you money if you’re not playing. So when you walk by that young guy, and it’s interesting, as I’ve gotten older, so many of the players will say, you remember when you told me that when I was a sophomore, that saved my life … 

“So coaches, be really, really careful with what you say, because they’re going to listen. And you’re very powerful in their life. They trust you because you are the coach, and make sure that you don’t walk away from a kid without knowing that he’s okay. And he’s feeling good, because you might have saved his life when you didn’t even realize.”