MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Social media was set ablaze Sunday and Monday with rumors about WVU head coach Neal Brown and the possibility of flirting with an SEC program.
With the calendar flipped to December, the college football coaching carousel always starts to spin a little faster, and according to several reports from 247 Sports and Rivals.com, South Carolina was interested in poaching Brown from the Mountaineers.
During Tuesday’s news conference, Brown was emphatic he is not involved in the coaching search.
“I’ll make it clear — I’m not a candidate there,” he said of the South Carolina job.
Brown played in the SEC East at Kentucky and coached the Wildcats for two seasons, but has no connection to the Gamecocks outside of conference affiliation. South Carolina fired Will Muschamp in November after 4 1/2 seasons with the program.
“I guess it’s good because it means people are paying attention, thinking we’re doing something right,” Brown said. “I guess it’s positive from that matter. Several people told me that [Monday]. I haven’t been real active on social media other than promoting my wife on whatever Instagram Live is. I’m trying to figure out what that is. I really don’t go about addressing every rumor or everything like that that’s out there because I think you’ll spin yourself in a web because I don’t think there’s anyway to keep up.”
In just under two seasons at WVU, Brown is 10-10 overall and 7-9 in Big 12 play.
Iowa State rolls back clock with tight ends
Over the last 15 years, tight ends were phased out of many college offenses, at least as tight ends as we knew them prior. Rarely were there 270-pound tight ends who lined up with the offensive line, and during the spread offense boom, tight ends were pretty much regulated to being big and physical slot receivers.
Now, with offenses becoming more versatile in both the run and pass game, tight ends are coming back into style, and Iowa State (7-2, 7-1 Big 12) knows exactly what it’s doing with them.
Charlie Kolar (31 catches, 417 yards, four touchdowns) was a preseason All-American and has lived up to the billing, but Chase Allen (13 catches, 173 yards, two touchdowns) and Dylan Soehner (15 catches, 174 yards, two touchdowns) are just as important to what the Cyclones want to accomplish.
“The word I would probably use to describe that group is ‘exceptional,’ ” head coach Matt Campbell said. “What we’ve asked those guys to do, the amount of knowledge, understanding, adapting and even the ability in game to adjust, has been incredible. Their ability to retain those items, the ability to have the knowledge and football awareness to be able to adapt and grow, it’s been tremendous.”
Their versatility can cause matchup problems for opposing defenses, something WVU (5-3, 4-3) knows will be in the game plan Saturday. The key isn’t stopping the tight ends as much as getting pressure on quarterback Brock Purdy.
“Their advantage at tight end is not going away,” defensive line coach Jordan Lesley said. “They aren’t going to go from 6-7 to 6-3 overnight, so that’s something we’re going to have to deal with and make those contested plays. The thing we’ve got to do is we have to affect the throw more than anything, opposed to putting a special type of defender on those guys. We’ve got to be able to affect the guy throwing the ball to them. That’s more important than anything matchup that we would try to do.”
Tweet @SeanManning_1
