UNC football coach Mack Brown enjoys round with Roy Williams, Panthers owner Dave Tepper

UNC head football coach Mack Brown watched on Wednesday as Panthers owner David Tepper sank an eagle putt to close out a five-and-a-half-hour round of golf at the Wells Fargo Championship Pro-Am at Quail Hollow Club.

Tepper’s final putt led to applause from the crowd. And the round itself — which also featured former UNC basketball coach Roy Willaims and pros JT Poston and Dylan Frittelli — earned Tepper kind words from Brown.

“Like me, he’s a weekend golfer,” Brown said. “But he was fun, we laughed, we talked football. He was asking about things like NIL and the transfer portal and what it’s like and when it changes. But we had a good time.”

The trio of Brown, Tepper and Williams — with a split shift from Poston, a Hickory native, and Frittelli — landed near the top up the Pro-Am leaderboard at 12-under-par.

During the round, Brown and Tepper talked college football and the Panthers’ recent draft. But Brown wouldn’t share the details of the draft conversation, jokingly deflecting by chatting about his current quarterback, Drake Maye.

“I think that Drake Maye is really good, and that’s what I’m worried about — my quarterback, not his,” Brown said with a smile. “So much goes into recruiting and evaluation, and so much goes into the draft that these guys have relationships with these young people — they talk to them, they eat with them, they watch them workout — they get to do a lot more with them than we get to do in recruiting. So, they usually have a really good idea of who they want in the draft.”

Maye — who went to Myers Park High School in Charlotte — has received notable 2024 draft hype heading into his redshirt sophomore year with the Tar Heels. Despite the buzz, Brown said he knew the 6-foot-4, 225-pound quarterback would stick around the program instead of chasing a lucrative NIL deal elsewhere.

“A lot of people would love to have Drake, obviously,” Brown said. “And he’s from Charlotte, his dad was a GA for me, he’s got two brothers who went to school (at UNC), mom and dad went to school there — he’s a legacy in this state, and he’s a Tar Heel. There was never any question in my mind that Drake Maye would stay at Carolina.”

And while the Tar Heels won’t lose Maye, Brown did lose a beloved assistant coach to the Panthers in March.

Brown spoke with Tepper about new Panthers tight ends coach John Lilly on the course, and he praised the hire made by Carolina head coach Frank Reich, who plucked Lilly from Brown’s Chapel Hill staff.

“John Lilly is a great person — number one,” Brown said. “He’s a great father, outstanding husband . . . and he was a mentor for kids, and he’s an outstanding teacher. And David said all of that about him — just watching him work, he does an outstanding job with the guys. Our loss and the Panthers’ gain.”

Overall, Brown said he enjoyed his time with two of the biggest names in North Carolina sports.

“You can tell Roy is retired — he played better than the rest of us,” Brown said jokingly. “It was fun. I was with David when we were at the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame with Julius Peppers. Got to spend some time then. But it’s great — you get to spend (five) hours with somebody walking on the golf course, you get to know them a lot better. And he was fun and he played well, so it was great.

“We had two outstanding golfers — I like the format here. The course is unbelievable. But to have nine holes with two golfers, you get to play with both guys, and that’s a lot of fun as well.”