CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A decade has passed since Mack Brown and Manny Diaz were on the same coaching staff together, their former partnership at Texas abruptly ending when Brown fired Diaz from his post as the Longhorns’ defensive coordinator just two games into the 2013 season.
The two men have traveled their own college football paths across the years since then, their courses separating and then intersecting again three times from 2019-21, when facing each other as opposing head coaches.
North Carolina’s road assignment on Saturday against unbeaten Duke at Wallace Wade Stadium (4 p.m., ESPN2) renews an old rivalry with the 111th all-time meeting between the neighboring programs, and arrives with a certain sense of Shakespearean irony built into the backdrop of the matchup…