After spending the last few seasons on the hot seat, Neal Brown was ultimately relieved of his duties as the head coach at West Virginia.
Brown served as the Mountaineers’ head coach from 2019 to 2024, putting together a 37-35 overall record and leading WVU to four bowl appearances in six seasons.
After getting to six wins in 2024, it appeared that Brown might be able to survive the season with another bowl victory. However, Baker explains that the 52-15 loss to Texas Tech was just too much for the program to stomach.
On Friday, Brown made his first public media appearance since being let go, doing an extended radio hit with WVMentoNews. During the 20-minute interview, Brown covered several topics, mostly pertaining to the failure of the 2024 season.
“The things I would say are my ownership — we didn’t play well enough on defense,” Brown said. “Our evaluations over a couple year period of time in the defensive backfield hurt us. We didn’t do a good enough job. And then we didn’t have the money to go spend to fix it. We were inconsistent on offense. Sometimes we were really good. Sometimes we were average. We weren’t necessarily bad, maybe other than Saturday. But we were inconsistent. We played a difficult schedule but that is not an excuse.”
“I take ownership. I think we had a team that should have been better than 6-6. It is a team that easily could have been 7-5, 8-4. With the schedule, could we have been 10-2? I am not sure about that.”
In addressing one of the several issues that led to his downfall, Brown said something that might be easily misconstrued:
“You can’t have top-four league expectations, but bottom-four resources.”
When taken out of context, it might appear that Brown was taking a shot at his former employer, but when you add in that he expects Wren Baker to bring in the necessary resources to be at or near the maximum amount allowed for revenue sharing, it changes everything.
“You can’t have top-four league expectations and have bottom-four resources. Wren is going to change that. It takes time. That’s not something you can overturn. But we are resourced in the bottom four in several categories — salary pool, revenue share, NIL — however you want to speak about it. But I think that’s all going to change.
“You can catch lightning in a bottle and be under-resourced. But to do it consistently in the program that this fanbase wants, you have to resource it.”
The overall feeling to take away from Brown’s interview was one of gratitude and sincerity for the time he and his family spent in Morgantown.
“I am really grateful for our time here. I am thankful to the people of West Virginia for welcoming us six years ago. That sounds crazy to say. The days are long, some, but the years are short. The tenure here has felt like a short amount of time. Our kids have grown up here and we have made lifetime friends. People at the Puskar Center and our football staff, our football family, everybody in the athletic department, the City of Morgantown, University-wide, they have been really supportive,” Brown said.
“I am quick to note that nobody died. This isn’t a funeral. It is part of the profession. It is a lot harder on the kids than probably me. We’ll get through it. A lot of families are dealing with a lot worse things. I am full of gratitude today and this week for the opportunity at West Virginia.”
