Mack Brown at UNC: Are the heels really hiring their former coach?

North Carolina will hire Mack Brown to replace Larry Fedora as head coach of football, Monday morning announced the 247Sports UNC site. According to the report, an announcement was expected Tuesday and Brown was already training his coaching staff.

Brown was the coach of Tar Heels from 1988 to 1997. He had three seasons of 10 wins in this period before taking the coaching position for which he is most famous: that of Texas, where he spent 16 years. Brown's four wins in AP Poll's top 19 from 1992 to 1997 are The Heels' most recent super multi-year series.

After Brown's departure, the program quickly declined under Carl Torbush, and he did not have a final standings before Fedora hit an 11-3 mark in 2015.

Many of us will have a hard time understanding why UNC hired a 67-year-old head coach who was out of the game for five seasons.

When Brown won a national championship in Texas with Vince Young, who had probably the best individual season in his history, the current rookies were almost kindergarten age. The last thing on Brown's record is the loss of four to seven games each year from 2010 to 2013.

However, there were indications that this was going to happen. Steven Godfrey and Richard Johnson, members of SB Nation, reported a week before Fedora's dismissal by UNC that the recalls really spoke of Brown's appointment to a position. Early Monday, more details on who has spent the last several years in various analyst roles at ESPN:

It starts with the fact that Brown wants to return to training. He is 67 years old, the same age as Nick Saban and two years older than Les Miles. The feeling is that there are only a few jobs that Brown would return to occupy, but UNC is one of them.

Brown enjoyed his stay at ESPN, but his competitive fire is still hot. His time in the four-letter network is as close to training as you can get without really getting in the way of preparation and testing. This also kept him very visible.

One of the names related to the future Brown hiring would be Texas A & M assistant Tim Brewster, a long-time Brown assistant who still has links to the area.

In addition to Brown, the Georgia Defense Coordinator, Mel Tucker, Appalachian State Head Coach Scott Satterfield and the state's offensive coordinator of the United States. Ohio, Ryan Day, aroused interest.

It's not like UNC is stuck in a corner and had to hire Brown. The sports director, Bubba Cunningham, wanted him and apparently badly. There are no vacancies at the moment that the Talons have had to face to attract talent. And the work was open for almost a day, which is consistent with Cunningham's desire to move quickly.

UNC must now answer important questions.

Tar Heel Blog asks three of them:

1. He will be 68 when the heels start against South Carolina next season. Is there an emergency plan or a head coach scenario pending?

2. If it's more of a "CEO" situation than Dabo Swinney / Herm Edwards, can he hire a prominent coaching staff? Gene Chizik (DC) and Kliff Kingsbury (OC) are among the first unemployed names with links to Brown. It would be a hell of a departure and would allay some worries. Tommy Thigpen returned to Chapel Hill this year and played under Brown. It will almost certainly be retained. Other members of the Brown era, such as Dr. Bly and Ronald Curry, could bite their teeth as coaches and recruiters have.

3. Did Brown orchestrate all this? Fedora thanked Brown for being a mentor at his introductory press conference in 2011. Reports indicated that Fedora had recently sought advice from Brown about recruitment into the state, prior to to ignore it largely. While Carolina had dropped to 5-18 in the last two seasons, did Brown (and the boosters) set a field that could not be ignored for Bubba Cunningham?

Could it really work? Everything is possible.

UNC is an interesting show for the same reasons as this for a long time. It's in the top half of the CCA. There are many talents that can be recruited in the Carolinas, and UNC is quite close to Virginia, Georgia and Maryland for a natural footprint. Brown has previously shown that it is possible to have great seasons there.

But hiring Brown is a daunting task in 2018.

The UNC would have bet its future on a man who has just celebrated nine years of his last double-digit victory, and who is on the verge of becoming one of the oldest new long-time head coaches. It's very much like an attempt to reclaim the old days of glory without being a creator, and while it sometimes works well, it often does not work at all.