North Carolina Football: Mack Brown starts strong on recruiting trail

North Carolina football has surprised in their early recruiting efforts. They boast a top 10 class with head-to-head wins over blue-blood programs.

It’s early in the 2020 college football recruiting cycle. Only a handful of programs have secured commitments from more than five or six players. As is usually the case, most of the top-tier blue-blood programs lead the way.

As the calendar turns to April, Alabama, Clemson, Miami, LSU and Florida round out the top five nationally ranked classes. Ohio State is sixth. Mississippi State is seventh. Florida State is eighth. So far, no surprises. All of those programs have been ranked inside the AP Top 10 in recent memory.

Next is North Carolina with No. 9 recruiting class in the nation. Yes, Mack Brown, who was in a broadcast booth at this time last spring, is currently out-recruiting Kirby Smart at Georgia (13th), James Franklin at Penn State (14th), Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma (15th) and current Longhorn headman Tom Herman (18th). And he’s doing it at a school which finished 2-9 last year.

Recruits can’t make their verbal pledges binding until December. By then most, if not all of those storied programs will have loaded up with blue-chip players from around the country. They very well might catch UNC down the road, but the fact they’re playing catch up is a feat in itself.

North Carolina has built a strong base. Top commit Cameron Roseman-Sinclair is a 4-star safety who picked UNC over Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia Tech. 4-star wide receiver Ray Grier also turned down the Vols and the Hokies to head to Chapel Hill. 4-star wide receiver Josh Downs has offers ranging from Ohio State to Oregon. 4-star linebacker Ethan West picked UNC over SEC heavyweights LSU, Florida and Texas A&M.

There are parts of the game which might have passed him by, but Mack Brown has proven he can recruit, and recruit with the best of them.