Neal Brown wasn’t surprised at being fired the day after the West Virginia University football team’s regular-season finale. Yet he isn’t bitter, either, with the way his tenure as WVU’s football coach ended.
Brown discussed his time at WVU on Friday morning on “MetroNews Talkline.” It was Brown’s first media appearance since being fired after a 6-6 season and a 37-35 six-year stint in Morgantown. Brown’s time at WVU ended with a crushing 52-15 loss at Texas Tech, where the Mountaineers trailed 42-3 after the first drive of the second half.
Brown met with WVU athletic director Wren Baker the next day, where it was decided that Brown was done.
“We played so poorly on Saturday, the negativity just kind of steamrolled,” Brown said. “I don’t think this is what Wren wanted to do, but, but it got to a point where it was probably best for both parties.”
Brown pointed to a couple of points during the 2024 season that likely tipped the scales in the decision, at least in terms of fans’ perspective. The first came after WVU allowed Pitt to erase a 10-point deficit in the final five minutes of this season’s iteration of the Backyard Brawl and ultimately beat the Mountaineers 38-34. The second came in the fourth quarter of the Mountaineers’ loss to Iowa State. WVU gave up two touchdowns in that quarter, turning a four-point hole into an 18-point hole that was too deep to overcome.
In both of those instances, the WVU defense faltered down the stretch, a common refrain throughout the season. The Mountaineers had one of the worst statistical defenses in the Football Bowl Subdivision in several categories, many of them in pass defense. They were among the bottom of the FBS in yards allowed, touchdowns allowed, opponents’ passer rating and yards per attempt.
Brown shouldered the blame for the defensive issues.
“Our evaluations over a couple-year period of time in the defensive backfield hurt us,” Brown said. “We didn’t do a good enough job, and then we didn’t have the money to go spend to fix it.”
Money – be it with name, image and likeness funds or other resources – was at times an issue, Brown said. Consistent success takes consistent funding, but he believed WVU would soon correct that situation.
“You can’t have top-four league expectations and have bottom four resources,” Brown said. “And Wren is going to change that. It takes time. But we’re resourced in the bottom four in several different categories, whether it was salary pool, (revenue) share or NIL, however you want to speak about it. But I think that’s all going to change.
“But institutionally, those things have got to change to get the program where it needs to be on a consistent basis,” he continued. “You can catch lightning in a bottle and be under-resourced. But to do it consistently in the program that this fanbase wants, you’ve got to resource it.”
Baker offered a similar perspective during his meeting with the media Tuesday, assuring those listening that WVU would improve its resources.
“If you look at where we’re at, we’re kind of in that 10,11,12 range in most of those categories,” Baker said. “But our expectation as a fan base – I’m not saying this isn’t fair – is to be in that top third of the league. And so I think if your funding is in the bottom third, and your expectation is the top third, that becomes really tough.”
Brown reiterated that he wasn’t bitter about his departure from West Virginia, and that his experiences in Morgantown will help make him a better coach at his next job. He hopes to coach again in 2025, and his name has been connected to openings at Charlotte and Appalachian State. He said his WVU tenure has made him a better delegator, a better CEO and better at the business side of college football.
He also said that, while the wins didn’t come as he had hoped, WVU’s football program is now on firmer footing in several areas that should give the next coach a strong foundation on which to build.
“When I think about our tenure here, there’s no question in my mind that from January of 2019 until Sunday when it ended, we left the West Virginia football program in a better place,” he said. “Whether it’s infrastructure, bricks and mortar, if you look at our facility now, compared to the one we inherited, if you look at the support system that we’ve put in place, from strength, conditioning, nutrition, sports psychology, the 5th Quarter program, all the football support, this is the way a Power 4 program should be.”
-Story by Derek Redd
