Aristotle, Aubrey Graham and energy: UNC tries to understand the unexplainable

Energy has been a big topic of the Tar Heels this week, but what do we actually know about it?

North Carolina’s first three games are best summed up by noted philosopher Aubrey Graham.

“Got a lotta people trying to drain me of this energy, trying to take this wave,” he said in his 2015 hit single.

Emotional comeback victories over Miami and South Carolina appeared to do just that to the Tar Heels, who believe they lacked the same spirit in the loss to Wake Forest before a late rally came up too late.

Mack Brown and his coaching staff spent all week preaching to their players about the need to attack the Deacons with the same zest they’d shown in the first two games, but when Carolina took the field, it was a deer in headlights en route to a 21-0 deficit.

After 31 years as a head coach and a decade before that as assistant, Brown still has yet to come up with an explanation for the how, why and when energy seems to come and go in college football.

A hall of famer relayed it best to him.

“Frank Broyles told me a long time ago that you better be better than seven teams on your schedule to have a good year,” Brown said. “That's when we were playing 11. Because, he said, you're probably only going to play with great emotion in four of those 11.

“Fans can't possibly understand that — I don't understand it — but I get it because these kids get tired and they’ve got a lot of things going on in their lives, but the best teams have to play every week and that's what we've got to learn to do.”

On paper, Carolina isn’t better than seven teams on its schedule. The Tar Heels are clearly better than Mercer, and after that, you’d have an argument either way on five opponents.

It’s certainly not better than the two teams it beat, but that’s the nature of Brown’s point on energy — a point that guys who have won more college football games than most can’t explain, yet, the reason they’ve been successful is their ability to consistently get it from their players more often than not.

After the game, fifth-year senior Aaron Crawford said he believed energy was the issue. After a few days of reflection, there’s still not a good explanation he can come up with.

“I’m not exactly sure why,” he said. “You could kind of feel it a little bit, and you kind of saw people try to get things stirred up, but it wasn’t really genuine, it seemed like. I feel like every man is responsible for their own energy but when we see it lacking, that’s something we have to step in and provide.”

That energy can come from leaders on the team like Michael Carter on offense and veterans on defense like Jason Strowbridge, Myles Dorn and Crawford, or it can come from Brown and coaches.

But how do you coach something you can’t quantify and something you can’t grade on tape?

“I think like you do in your life,” Brown said. “You have to learn to create it; you have to create an edge in everything you do every day and it’s hard to do…

“Every day in your life, if you get up and you’re sick and you’ve got a wife and kids, you’ve got to have energy and you’ve got to create an edge and do the things you need to do.”

Carter, known for his thoughtful nature and bigger-picture view, gets credit as an emotional leader for the Tar Heels.

He began playing the game at age four, so he’s not sure whether the energy came before the football or vice versa. What he does know is that he’s got it and there’s nothing he wants to do more than share it.

“Just be myself; that’s the easiest part of it,” he said. “Creating your own energy is difficult for some people and it’s not for me. I feel like energy is contagious.

“It’s probably my favorite thing in my whole life that I do, when I see people that are down and I do my best to pick ‘em up.”

Asked about how Carter provides it, receiver Dyami Brown joked that he and teammates approach and request an energy boost.

Unfortunately for the Tar Heels, it wasn’t that easy. Maybe it was the exhaustion of two victories or maybe it was the letdown of not facing a program with a brand-name like South Carolina or Miami. Either way, it wasn’t there and Carolina couldn’t catch it, no matter who tried to provide it.

All they know is that the loss did lead them to finding it again when they returned to Chapel Hill.

“The energy has been really good this week,” Brown said. “We obviously talked a lot about the lack of energy we had on Friday night, that you have to earn the right to win a game and if you don’t come out with all you’ve got and play your best, you’re probably not going to win the game.”

Over the first two weeks of the season, Brown didn’t like how his team practiced on Tuesdays and was shocked they hadn’t carried the emotions of winning into the next week.

That changed this Tuesday.

“Guys came out with a high level of focus, a high level of passion and energy,” Crawford said. “It was good to see.”

That’s going to be useful, because Brown knows that App State is going to show up with a ton of it on Saturday.

The Mountaineers’ recipe for energy is different from that of the Tar Heels, with Brown pointing out that some of App State’s best players have been guys who have a bone to pick with Carolina and other ACC programs.

“Most of the guys have been turned down by us or State on that team, and they were mistakes, because they ended up being really good players and go to the NFL,” Brown said. “They will play hard Saturday.”

But will they play too hard, as they did in 2016 when Miami visited Boone and App State barely resembled itself in a blowout loss?

Jeez. This is silly.

Another philosopher — this one a little older — had some thoughts on energy, too.

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life,” Aristotle once wrote, supposedly.

That sounds really nice, and Aristotle was a smart guy, but it’s obvious this is just the kind of nebulous explanation concocted to keep anyone from asking for a deeper explanation.

All Aristotle did was formulate the Greek word, “energeia,” that ultimately became “energy.”

We’ve been hearing about the nebulous concept of energy — or energeia — since 300 B.C., and despite Drake rapping about it, Greek philosophers writing about it and football coaches preaching to their teams about it, we still haven’t pinned down its whims and fancies.

At any rate, Brown knows the Tar Heels need more of it on Saturday — whatever “it” is.

“You have to earn the right to win a game and if you don’t come out with all you’ve got and play your best, you’re probably not going to win the game,” Brown said. “We’re not good enough to do that at this point.”