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USA TODAY & # 39; HUI Paul Myerberg on the biggest risers, underperformers and surprises of the 13th week in the top 25 poll Amway Coaches.
USA TODAY Sports

When North Carolina lost to East Carolina by three touchdowns in the second week of the season, speculation began for the university football coaching industry on the question of who could replace struggling coach Larry Fedora.

Would he be a beginner with previous links to the program like Seth Littrell of North Texas or Blake Anderson of Arkansas State? Would that be the place for Scott Satterfield, who played 50-24 at Appalachian State and who regularly scares Penn State and Tennessee? Or could a more experienced Power Five coach be attracted to the Tar Heels, a program that has long been considered a sleeping giant because of its national brand-focused basketball, quality of life of its campus and its proximity with recruitment pockets rich in talent?

Instead, the answer came Monday when North Carolina has decided to bring back Mack Brown, 67, a Tar Heels coach from 1988 to 1997, and is expected to be honored next week in New York City as part of the new University Football Hall of Fame class.

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It may be a coincidence, but North Carolina hired Brown without a real coaching search a week after Kansas was blocked from the start on Miles, 65, and a year after Arizona State had fired Todd Graham while Herm Edwards, 64, was locked up feels like something that needs to be discussed.

Given all the factors at play in each of these programs, it would be too powerful to talk about trends. But what does it say about the current situation in the coaching industry when three potentially interesting jobs, likely to attract a wide range of candidates, have instead chosen to stick to retreaders old enough to collect social security benefits? ?

Maybe it's said that college football, with so many millions of people competing in every coaching recruitment, has become a risk-averse company. He says that nostalgia and personality outweigh the proven ability to do more with less. Frankly, people who make very motivating decisions about coaches do not really know how to evaluate coaches.

The visionaries are outside. The reading glasses are in

And in a sense, you can somehow make sense. Granted, hiring a young coach with a slim track record that would be a likely candidate for North Carolina is, by definition, a more varied venture.

An example: there is a good chance Mike Norvell from Memphis is the next Dabo Swinney. He is young, very energetic, has recruited above the historical level of his program and is about to play for a title of the American Athletics Conference for the second year in a row. On the other hand, it could be said that this is simply another version of Kevin Sumlin, who went to Texas A & M with fanfare after passing the torch in Houston, but did not have enough insight defensive nor global substance to flourish on the big stage.

Nobody will really know until Norvell, 37, who is 26 years old in his career, has that chance. But Power Five's athletic directors seem more agitated than ever to put their own reputation on the line and make that call.

Just look at the coaches who were fired this year. Kliff Kingsbury was the most popular coordinator in the country when Texas Tech hired him six years ago. Mike MacIntyre had gone from 1-12 to 10-2 at San Jose State, perhaps the toughest place to win for all FBS games, before Colorado won in 2012. Fedora and his High-flying offensive have won four consecutive seasons at Southern Miss. before receiving the call from North Carolina.

And more and more, athletics directors know that no matter how much money they collect or the number of titles won by their employees in women's football, the length of their term will be determined by the fact that they may or may not choose a winning football coach. So, perhaps the natural culmination of this pressure is an affinity for older, more mature coaches who, if at all, do not have to learn a lot at work.

No one thinks Miles will win Big 12 titles in Kansas or that Brown's cap, which seemed almost half retired in Texas, will be particularly high in North Carolina.

But it is likely that Miles and Brown will do the following: Avoid scandals off the field, increase the minimum skills required and attract both attention and donations.

And maybe that's enough for these people to be recruited successfully in four or five years.

However, the lack of long-term vision and reluctance to have real conviction on the part of the next generation of coaches seem like nothing more than a mere punt on the 35-meter line. l & # 39; opponent.

Brown is a great human being who was truly one of the best coaches of the game from 1996 to 2009. But the work of Bubba Cunningham, North Carolina, is supposed to identify the next Mack Brown, which has nothing to envy to the one that existed two decades ago.

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