How to restore balance to college football? Hall of Fame coach Mack Brown has an idea.
“I’d love to see Memphis and Boise play for a national championship — we’d all watch it,” said Mack Brown at a speaking engagement for the Memphis Touchdown Club on Monday, Sept. 8. (Chris Seward/AP file)
Mack Brown still has fond memories of roaming the sidelines at what is now called Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.
The year was 1978, and Brown, a Hall of Fame college football coach most known for his tenures at Texas and North Carolina, was a 27-year-old wide receivers coach at then-Memphis State.
Only five years removed from a playing career that saw him line up at running back for Vanderbilt and Florida State, Brown was ecstatic to join then Tigers coach Richard Williamson’s staff when given the opportunity to do so. Williamson had been an assistant under Hall of Fame coaches Bear Bryant at Alabama and Frank Broyles at Arkansas, after all.
“And those two coaches were two of the best in the country,” Brown said Monday evening, Sept. 8, while at the Hilton Memphis during a speaking engagement with the Memphis Touchdown Club. “So, I thought all the knowledge they had, I would get. So that’s why I came here. And it was a wonderful experience for me.”
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Memphis Tigers Memphis Tigers Football Mack Brown Memphis Touchdown Club College Football Playoff Subscriber OnlyAre you enjoying your subscription?
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Parth Upadhyaya
Parth Upadhyaya covers the Memphis Tigers men’s basketball team. A Raleigh, N.C., native and a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Media and Journalism, Upadhyaya is a longtime college hoops junkie. Prior to joining The Daily Memphian in 2022, he covered high school sports in western Pennsylvania for the Beaver County Times and Penn State football for the Centre Daily Times.
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