Mack Brown calls for North Carolina fans to support NIL efforts: 'We've got to be aligned'

Since returning to North Carolina in 2019, Mack Brown has led the Tar Heels to a 38-27 record. All the while, college sports have transformed with NIL and the transfer portal becoming crucial parts of the landscape.

After a fourth consecutive bowl game loss, Brown met with reporters this week for his post-season press conference and issued a plea for fans to contribute to UNC’s NIL efforts. Heels4Life, the football team’s primary NIL collective, is running a campaign called “Hold The Line” with a goal of raising $1 million “to protect and enhance” the roster.

During his opening statement, Brown said North Carolina is off to a strong start in the NIL space — but he said the program needs to keep pace with the rest of the top teams.

“All North Carolina fans need to align and get on board because it’s here, it’s real and it’s fair,” Brown said. “And our guys need to be treated to the same opportunities with NIL like everybody else in the country. [Monday] morning, we started a ‘Hold The Line,’ Heels4Life membership campaign. And that’s to ask everybody out there that’s a North Carolina fan to step up and help us. Regardless of how small or how big, we need your help in NIL. Heels4Life has done a great job. They got us started, but it needs to get bigger and better fast. And that’s what we’ve got to do moving forward.

“So the ‘Hold The Line’ campaign is one that Heels4Life and the administration, everybody’s talked about. We’re asking every Tar Heel fan to secure a membership on the Heels4Life website, make a contribution. And that includes as we said Ram’s Club members, season ticket holders, fans from all over the country because every dollar does make a difference. And this opportunity for our fans is a vested interest in our program. It’s a way for everybody to help and everybody to be involved.”

Brown said the goal for the campaign is to have 5,000 members and raise more than $5 million. However, he expressed the need for urgency because of “tampering” going on around the country.

Bringing big-time talent in is important, but Brown added the ability to retain current players is also a key part of the initiative.

“We’ve got to be aligned and we’ve got to be inclusive, and we’ve got to have a plan moving forward, and we’ve got to make that plan work because this is this is modern day college football as we go through it. And without a strong collective, we can’t compete like our fans want to, like our expectations are. … But we’ve got to have that in place by next season, and then, you’ve got to continue to have it grow and make it sustainable because that’s what we’re hearing from our players on our team,” Brown said.

“No. 1, you’ve got to be able to get players here. No. 2, you’ve got to be able to retain your roster because people are coming after your players. They’re actually calling them and offering them money to leave. So we’ve got to be able to have a program that they love it here. … And with the [expanded] College Football Playoff starting next year, it’s a great time for us to take another major step and be a contender nationally, which is what we expected to do when we came back. And I know our fan base will react immediately.”

Mack Brown: The changes in college football over the last two seasons have been ‘unbelievable’

Mack Brown started his head coaching career in 1983 at Appalachian State, and his first stint at North Carolina was from 1988-97. But the amount of change he’s seen over the last two seasons, he said, has been more transformative than any years before.

Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban previously talked about college football heading toward a “semi-pro” direction. Brown echoed a similar sentiment, but pointed out the key issue with the state of college football: tampering.

“Looking at my 35 years as a head coach, there’s been more changes the last two years than the first probably 45 years I coached,” Brown said. “It’s been unbelievable with the transfer portal, tampering, NIL — the changes that have brought to college football. I mean, you couldn’t have imagined three years ago, these things actually happening and being put in place. We don’t even talk about amateurism anymore. We’re headed toward an NFL model, and we’re in the NFL model right now without guidelines. So I look forward to the day that we have guidelines and that we’re more like the NFL and that there’s probably going to be a salary cap and guys are going to get paid through universities at some point, beyond their scholarships.

“Then, they’ve got to figure out the tampering piece. So there’s some things that are out there. The game’s still great, the guys that play it are wonderful. They didn’t ask for any of this. So when people get mad at players saying, ‘Oh, they just want money now.’ They didn’t ask for this. We, as adults, are the ones that put this model forward. So that’s not fair for the players.”