MORGANTOWN — It would seem Neal Brown is going to be missing out on the fun this weekend, not that he exactly minds.
As the WVU football team rests during its bye week, Brown’s weekend will instead be filled with evaluating recruits and scouting No. 20 Oklahoma State.
WVU (2-2, 1-0 Big 12) will travel to Stillwater, Okla. on Oct. 5.
The rest of his Big 12 brethren, meanwhile, will likely be on one heck of a roller-coaster ride with conference games coming down to the final quarter, the final possession and sometimes even the final play.
“That’s the way it’s going to be,” Brown said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Welcome to the new life in the Big 12 since the departure of Oklahoma and Texas to the SEC.
To help fill that gap, Cincinnati, BYU, UCF and Houston joined the league in 2023; Utah, Colorado, Arizona and Arizona State this year.
It’s created a never-leave-your-seat football conference where no one is hardly familiar with anyone else and rarely is a victory assured until the final second has ticked off the clock.
The evidence:
** Colorado seemingly lost to Baylor when a desperation pass was dropped, only to send the game into overtime on the next play when a Hail Mary prayer was answered. Colorado won 38-31.
** UCF trailed TCU 31-13 with five minutes remaining in the third quarter, only to mount a comeback that saw receiver Kobe Hudson snag a 20-yard TD catch between two defenders with 36 seconds left in the game to win it 35-34.
** WVU trailed Kansas last week 28-17 with 5:39 left in the game, but then Garrett Greene engineered two late scoring drives to give the Mountaineers a 32-28 win. Greene’s go-ahead TD pass came with just 26 seconds remaining.
This all came in just the first seven Big 12 games of the season. There’s still 65 of them remaining with seven more on the schedule Saturday.
“I’ve said this a lot about our league: The good thing is you have an opportunity to win every game. The bad news is you also have an opportunity to lose every game,” Brown said.
Through the early conference schedule, the margin of victory in Big 12 games is 12.3 points per game. The outlier is the Cincinnati-Houston game, in which the Bearcats won 34-0.
Take that game out of the equation, the average margin of victory becomes seven points.
“I think everybody knows it,” Brown said. “If you were to talk to all 16 (Big 12 coaches) today, that’s the expectation. It’s a tough league. The talent is somewhat equal and there’s high-level coaching.”
So, what makes the difference? What provides the winning edge?
In Brown’s opinion, it’s a lot more than just luck or having the football gods looking favorably upon you.
“I think home-field advantage matters in college football. That’s not always the case, but it is pretty consistent,” Brown said. “Our league is going to be that way. I think the coaching in this league is at a high end and there’s not a huge talent disparity between one through 16.
“Games are going to come down to the end. A lot of times, it will come down to special teams. It’s really not who makes the big play, it’s who doesn’t have the big negative.”
In terms of Xs and Os, “The other indicator in this league — when you look at it over the course of the whole year — is who can run the ball,” Brown said.
