Dance like nobody's watching: how early-morning moves, good vibes and deep talks are helping change the culture for UNC

By Monday morning, Mack Brown said he’d received text messages from about 600 people congratulating him on North Carolina’s season-opening victory and near-unanimously telling him it’d be best if he left dancing to his players in the future.

Highlight-worthy as several of the Tar Heels’ fourth-quarter plays were, it was Brown’s impromptu — and somewhat unintelligible — moves that have been in heavy rotation on television and social media since.

“I would call them very awkward,” Brown said, smiling. “I don’t dance and I’ve never thought about it, so all I did was what I’ve seen the kids do in their dances. I tried to do a few of those things and that was it. By the way, there wasn’t music, so it really wasn’t fair.”

If you’re wondering how much fun it is to be a Tar Heel, watch this. #CarolinaFootball 🏈 #BeTheOne pic.twitter.com/NITTJLbIuf
— Carolina Football (@UNCFootball) September 1, 2019

The world saw the dance, and even someone who had never seen one Carolina football game in the past two years could feel the unbridled joy of the celebration from young players who have longed to be known as winners, and the 68-year old winner who’s finding a fountain of youth in returning to rescue the Carolina program for a second time.

“I wanted to come back to have fun and I want the kids to have fun,” Brown said.

But there’s no way a 20-second clip could actually explain the significance of the dance and its origins that started with 6:30 a.m. meetings in the winter, a hall of famer looking to establish a new culture and built trust with players he didn’t recruit, with some skeptical about a coach who had been out of the game for five seasons.

Those meetings weren’t all about having fun and dancing.

At times, it was the complete opposite, but ultimately, they’ve helped set the tone for a new era of Carolina football.

A new kind of love

Team meetings, but you’d might as well call them family meetings, because like families, they weren’t always about rainbows and butterflies.

Given the 6:30 a.m. start, coaches wanted to get the players excited, which led to defensive backs coach Dre Bly leading a dance contest, but from there, things took a different tone as two players and one staffer were chosen to tell their life story — the good, the bad, the ugly — in front of the whole team.

“Sometimes, the stories, you’d ask them about their hardships and sometimes you’d never know just looking at them what they’ve really been through,” safety Myles Wolfolk said. “Some guys got up there very confidently to tell us their true stories and it made us love each other a lot more. I would say I’ve got a lot more respect for a lot of guys on this team and that’s why I go out there and fight so hard for them.”

Brown explained his rationale for asking his players to stand in front of hundreds of people to tell the most intimate details of their lives.

“It let us all understand better at a faster pace,” he said. “You can imagine, you’re coming in and so many times when the new coach comes in, they say, ‘It takes two or three years to get everybody to know each other.’ Well, we don’t have two or three years anymore; it’s not fair to the seniors.”

So there the Tar Heels were, on those chilly mornings, talking about the people who have inspired them, the greatest joys they’ve experienced and darkest moments. Sometimes, the mood did a 180-degree turn from the dance contest that Bly had led just minutes earlier.

“Just standing there in front of the whole team and giving your hardships and being vulnerable in front of the whole team is something you don’t see with men,” safety Myles Dorn said. “I wouldn’t say that we’re not allowed to be soft and put yourself out there, but when you do that in front of a team and you’re not being judged and everybody is doing it, it kind of brings you closer together. Coaches did it too; tears were shed and we were all just together as one unit. That’s when we kind of knew the love for each other on the team was different.”

And when you’ve cried with that guy next to you in the secondary, you might be a little more likely to push just a little harder through your exhaustion or be willing to put your body on the line for fear of letting him down. Having known what he’s overcome in life, maybe you won’t cheat on your assignment for fear he won’t handle his business.

“You’re willing to do more for that person when you know them to the fullest,” Dorn said. “The only reason you’re willing to do that much for family is because you know them, you know what they’ve been through and what they stand for. When you know what the guy beside you stands for and you know he’s going to be there, then you have no question … when it’s time for you to hit your gap. You’re not going to do no extra, no more, because you know the guy beside you is going to be there.”

This isn't an act

Not only did the stories that were shared in those meetings impact players, but coaches got a new sense of the men they were leading and that maybe, a one-size fits all approach isn’t always the answer.

“For them to stand up there and say those things to us, it just made us as coaches want to get up there and say things we wouldn’t have told them either,” Brown said. “I really felt like it’s made a huge difference in communications and trust and respect, because now that I’ve seen what you’ve gone through, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to coach him differently. I need to pick him up, I need to help him because he’s been beaten down.’”

Brown has always had a reputation as a player’s coach, but looking back, he knows there were times at Texas where his focus on perfection and winning had taken some of the joy out of the game.

That hasn’t been the case in his return to Chapel Hill, where some players had to adjust to just how positive he was at times.

“There were times where we were like, ‘This guy is really like this all the time, it’s not an act,’” Wolfolk said. “That’s the craziest part we had to come to realize this isn’t an act; he’s really this guy and it’s genuine with him and that’s what we love about him.”

Brown preached that confidence and optimism since he arrived, and unbeknownst to him on Saturday, ESPN’s cameras caught him getting onto Bly after the Tar Heels made a mistake, telling his former player to get his head up during a timeout.

“One of the responsibilities we have as coaches is to take our players and teach them when things are bad, when you’ve got something that’s going wrong, what a great opportunity to fix it and get better,” he said. “So we say adversity is just an opportunity for a positive. Here’s Dre’ at the end of the game when we screwed some stuff up, he’s going, ‘Aww, man.’ I said, ‘No, no, no, no, you grow up and you be positive and go out there and get a stop. That’s your job; not to sit here and be down.’ That’s just who we are and thank goodness we have a positive staff.”

Offensive coordinator Phil Longo said that’s the sort of guidance Brown has been offering his assistants from day one.

“Every minute of every day, and the easy thing about it is it’s 100 percent sincere,” he said. “You know when he says something, he means it, and when he wants something in the building, whether it’s culture, atmosphere or verbiage, there’s a reason behind it. Even when you don’t understand what he wants or he’s doing something he’s doing something that he does, you wait …. and after a while, you start to realize he has a plan for everything. You have total confidence in what he gives you and what he wants you to do and what he tells you. He’s definitely the energy in the building.”

One of the first acts of the new coaching staff was to solicit advice from players on how they could update the players’ lounge in the Kenan Football Center, as most said it was outdated and didn’t have much they were interested in using.

Now, it’s become a destination, even for players like Dorn, who lives off campus.

“Ever since Mack got here, being around the building has been fun,” he said. “After school or after practice I (used to) go straight back to the apartment. Now, we stick around in the players’ lounge and we hang out. I get to know more of the young guys, the freshmen that I wouldn’t really talk to if that wasn’t the case. Just being around and sharing stories and being with the guys has brought us closer.”

Making good

Amid the early-morning dance contests, there was one man missing from the fun as Brown declined the invitation as his team chanted his name.

“‘No; I’m the boss, I’m not dancing,’” Brown said. “They said, ‘Come on coach, you need to dance for us.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t dance.’ Then, I made a real mistake in my life, I said, ‘Beat South Carolina, then I’ll dance.’”

He’d largely forgotten that promise until Saturday evening when he returned to the victorious locker room and a hundred guys in Carolina blue were ready for him to make good on yet another promise, even Brown said he’d retired from dancing after Cranking Dat Soulja Boy before a 2007 Texas victory over Oklahoma State.

“As I’m walking in the dressing room they could have cared less about anything else than, ‘Dance, dance,’” Brown said. “The dance that I did is pretty embarrassing. I didn’t know there would be video of it, either. Trying to find it all and buy my way out of it, but I think it’s too far out there.”

But that’s exactly what the dance was about — allowing the emotion to wash over you in front of your team and putting yourself a little further out there than you ever imagined. It’s about living in the moment, having fun and realizing your team doesn’t care exactly how you dance, as long as you’re dancing with them.

He says his dancing days are over again, but don’t count on it.

“I said, ‘Yeah, I get it.’ Needless to say, that was the first time I’d thought about that since I made my promise. Next time I may cut my hair or something; I’m not going to dance.”