The Tar Heel Football program received some big news today, as head football coach Mack Brown, was given a contract extension through the 2025 season. This extension is with the framework of the original extension, after his first season back on the job in Chapel Hill. More significantly, all of the current full time assistant coaches were given three year deals, a rarity in college football these days. With the announcement of the extensions, it was announced that wide receivers coach Lonnie Galloway was promoted to assistant head coach, and new running backs coach Larry Porter will also serve as assistant special teams coordinator.
Let’s start with the assistants. This move is a big one for the athletic department, which had so much trouble keeping members of the staff around under Larry Fedora. While Robert Gillespie may have left in the offseason for Alabama, that’s a job that you can’t blame him for taking with the prestige that a job on the Crimson Tide staff brings. He is the only member of Mack Brown’s first two staffs to depart so far, though, after coaching departures became a part of just about every offseason in the latter part of the Fedora era. This is now the second straight season that the supporting staff has reportedly received some sort of compensation increase, something that donors and the fans were begging for when the hire of Brown was made.
As for Brown, when he was hired back in November of 2018, the wonder was just how long he planned on coaching in his second go-round with the Tar Heels. Originally, the goal seemed to be to get the head coaching job back to being one that would be attractive during the next coaching search, but those goals have quickly become to succeed in a way that this program hasn’t since his first stint in Chapel Hill. Some were concerned that the passion would run out quickly for Brown, but as this contract shows, that passion doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Monday has been a hectic day throughout Tar Heel athletics, but the long term stability of the football program being locked in place is comforting. While there is no guarantee that Mack Brown and his staff will be able to accomplish the lofty goals that are being set for them, he will now have an extended timeline to do it and continue to build this program.