MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
The announcement came late Sunday afternoon, but the fate was all but determined long before late Saturday afternoon when West Virginia found itself hopelessly out of its final regular-season game at Texas Tech, a game the Mountaineers would lose, 52-15, to even their still-bowl eligible record to 6-6.
Would a win at Texas Tech have saved Neal Brown’s job? Would even a respectable showing have made a difference? Likely not, given the multiplying empty seats in Milan Puskar Stadium during WVU home games.
Neal Brown came to Morgantown with the much-needed favorite neighbor on the block track record, given the success and high regard he created as the head coach at Troy State University, and almost immediately eliminated the rogue perceptions of WVU football left by the previous Dana Holgorsen frat party tenure.
Yet in trying to start the climb Brown urged the Mountaineer faithful to trust, he had to overcome a 3-win season in his first year, and then losing an entire year to the pandemic, and he just couldn’t do it.
There has been no cleaner football program than the one Neal Brown ran at West Virginia, but on this stage it’s a results business, and the results weren’t there, and because of that, the empty seats and the frustrated donors became the dominant, and winning, plot of the story line.
After going 9-4 last season, and with an experienced team coming back, there were larger expectations for 2024, but those were soon squashed right out of the gate with losses to Penn State and to Pittsburgh, which, at WVU, are despicable on their own merits; but to start the season?
Thus a 6-6, 37-35 and 25-28 in the Big 12 later, Neal Brown is no more, at least not in the big chair in the WVU football office. He won’t be out of work long, though, and may even end up back at his alma mater at Massachusetts, where he and his wife have continued to be big donors and where he is highly thought of.
The truth is, unless the Mountaineers had shocked the world and opened the season with wins over Penn State and Pittsburgh and become a frontrunner for the Big 12 title, this was likely Brown’s final year in Morgantown anyway.
It just seemed that foundation was laid last March when Brown signed a contract extension for a fourth year that would have taken him to 2027 as the WVU head coach. He also took a $400,000 salary cut over the first three years to reinvest in the program and assistant coaches’ salaries.
Now that Brown has been fired, he will be paid 75% of his remaining salary as opposed to the previous buyout that would have required West Virginia to pay him 100% had he been fired on or before December 31, 2024, and 85% if he were fired in 2025.
If Brown had left for another job at any point, he would have been paid 10% of his remaining total salary as opposed to 25% on the previous agreement had he left before December 31, 2024, and 12.5% of the remaining salary had he left in 2025.
Given the contract extension with more favorable terms for the university, we wondered last month how difficult it would be for both Neal Brown and WVU to part ways. Now we know. Not difficult at all. It almost feels to have been mutual, even if subconsciously on Brown’s part.
The next head coach at WVU will walk onto solid footing program-wise at WVU, and that is a testament to Brown. Still, it was time for a change, because West Virginia just has to be better than it’s been for the past six seasons, because it’s football and in Morgantown, football pays a lot more bills than it does at many other Power Four schools.
It’s too bad it didn’t work out, but for WVU, it’s a great opportunity to make a bold move, because that’s what it’s going to take to not only get all of the boosters back on board, but to strengthen the WVU football brand again on the national stage.
The list of suspects has become the usual suspects in less than 24 hours, many of whom have WVU histories and/or West Virginia state ties – Jimbo Fisher, Jamey Chadwell, Barry Odom, Shannon Dawson, Rich Rodriguez (yes, that one), Jason Candle and Andy Kotelnicki.
Athletic director Wren Baker has established his own hiring history as far as the type of coach he likes to have working for him, though, apologies to all previous hires, he has never made a hire that is going to be as big or have the lasting impact on so many things West Virginia University that this one is going to have.
Thus, it’s time to go big – as big as possible. So, if he’s interested, why not bring the Clarksburg native back to West Virginia? After all, Jimbo Fisher has won a national championship. He didn’t lose to Pitt the year he should have won one.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT