Former Texas coach Mack Brown admits of the job title he gave himself, ‘It was stupid’
Of the many distinctions and accolades he accumulated over the years, Mack Brown will always be known as “The CEO Coach.”
That’s one he’d like to have back.
Before appearing at the Fort Worth Club during the Davey O’ Brien awards banquet on Feb. 17, 2025, when he received The Legends Award, he talked candidly in an anteroom with the Star-Telegram and the Associated Press. He’s at that point when he’s OK talking about anything, including the idea that he wasn’t a head coach involved in development and game plans, but more as a “CEO.”
“I think I did. I think I messed up. It was stupid,” Brown said of the “CEO” title that he gave himself while the head coach at Texas, where he served from 1998 to 2013.
Early in his tenure at UT, Brown anointed himself a CEO. The tag followed him for the rest of his career, and has since become a popular description for coaches who project the image of being in charge of fund raising, sales, marketing, while leaving the most of the “coaching” and play calling to the assistants.
“I think I said, ‘I’m in charge of everything,’ because they said, ‘You’re an offensive coach?’ I said, ‘No, no, no, I’m like a CEO. I’m in charge of everything. I’m in all of the meetings.’
“Well, people took that I didn’t coach, right? And it was really stupid.”
It was both benign, and bothersome. “The CEO” coach, or “He’s a Mack Brown” type, have since become a part of the college football vernacular. The terms are not always delivered in a flattering way.
At least in his mind, the idea that he was not on the field coaching a kid but rather lounging in his office working the phones with donors was not offensive as much as laughably inaccurate.
“I didn’t cuss kids. I didn’t grab people on the sideline, so they always thought I was too soft. I was tough as hell,” Brown said. “I always had the motto that, and I told our coaches this, ‘Treat the players like you’d want your son or daughter to be treated.’ So you don’t have to grab them. You don’t have to cuss them; encourage them.
“Be hard on them, demand they do right, make sure they’re disciplined, but don’t grab them and don’t cuss. And so many of the younger coaches had to do that to show how tough they were. I didn’t care. I really didn’t care what people thought of me.”
Brown, 73, was effectively forced out as head coach at the University of North Carolina in late November of last year. He and his wife, Sally, have moved back to Austin (for the winter), while retaining a residence in North Carolina in the summer.
He said he’s still under contract at North Carolina, but expressed interest in potentially returning to the University of Texas in some capacity. He would be quite good at fund raising, as he has few peers in his ability to tell a story. He also mentioned potentially joining the podcast world, or returning as a TV color analyst, which he did between his time at UT and UNC.
Brown looks like a man who is rested, relaxed and D-O-N-E.
“I was ready to be through. And I think the frustration was it was probably more political than anything else,” Brown said of his departure as the head coach of the University of North Carolina. “So it didn’t really matter in the end.”
He said he has not spoken to his successor at North Carolina, Bill Belichik, but has visited with the team’s general manager, Michael Lombardi. Brown expressed nothing but optimism for the team, for Belichick, and that the university “finally stepped up” to build a program he coached twice for a total of 16 years.
Unlike so many of his now former colleagues who are 50-plus and still coaching, Brown has no feeling of disgust or disappointment over the radically different world that is college football in 2025.
He thinks the game is healthy. What he did say, however, was that the present model needs addressing.
“We don’t want it to be that the only teams with the money are the ones that are going to win. Everybody talked about NIL bringing more parity. It really didn’t. It separated the ones that had the money from the others,” he said. “Until we can get enough people that love this sport, and have enough knowledge, to get in a room and iron it out, because we’re making decisions without understanding the consequences, and that’s what gets you in trouble.
“NIL was a good thing. It’s not a good thing when there’s no cap. So we’ve got to get more like an NFL model now, because for the first time the NFL is much more organized than college football.”
Sounds like college football needs actual CEO (not a “CEO Coach.”)
