WVU football coach on the bubble?

West Virginia University football coach Neal Brown speaks to reporters at a recent press conference. (Photo courtesy of BlueGoldNews.com)

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Let’s talk.

It’s that time. We’ve tried to avoid it as long as we could, but this Neal Brown situation just keeps getting crazier and crazier.

Should he stay or should he go?

That’s what the conversation comes down to and both sides have strong points, which makes it a tricky proposition.

See, there’s no way to tell who’s right and who’s wrong.

It’s like those analytical equations we see now on everything in sports. This team has a 60% chance of winning this game.

What the hell does that mean? More importantly, what does it matter?

Score the first touchdown and it changes to 75%. Give up the first touchdown and it’s 40%.

The idea is to play out the game.

It’s been the same with Brown. He’s done nothing special to secure his job and he’s done nothing to be fired for it.

It kind of depends on when you look at it. After 2022 it seemed certain that his future was uncertain.

Then he won 9 games and a bowl in 2023, went 6-3 in the Big 12 and, to be honest, lost a game or two he could have won that kept him from having 10, maybe 11 wins.

And that was a Big 12 Conference that still had a Texas team growing into a national championship contender and an Oklahoma team that was steeped in history, although it was reeling backwardly.

Instead of being asked to exit, he got an extension.

And deserved it … but.

He had to play this year and there was so much hype that a 10-win season suddenly became the expectation.

However, Neal Brown’s teams since he arrived here seemed capable of beating the teams they should beat and losing to the teams they shouldn’t.

He opened up this year getting beaten up by Penn State and beaten by Pittsburgh. He seemed headed out the door with that start but somehow it turned out that the Big 12 just wasn’t a very good conference and there were teams there he could beat, so he won some games.

Probably wouldn’t have come under the kind of pressure that comes with billboards asking WVU to fire him and fans to wear brown paper bags over their heads had he found a way to win at home in front of those fans, but most of the winning efforts were coming on the road.

A month ago with a 3-4 record it seemed like the end was in sight, look now. He has won 3 of his last four and has a game at Texas Tech which is, probably, a game with a win probability of … who knows?

How should you look at Neal Brown? In the modern era of WVU football his six years on the job have him with a 37-34 record, which is a .521 winning percentage.

In their first 6 years as coach his predecessors offer this up: Don Nehlen .686, Rich Rodriguez .676, Dana Holgorsen .597 – and Bill Stewart got fired after three years of a .700 winning percentage, if you can imagine that.

Brown’s conference record is 25-27 which doesn’t even match Dana Holgorsen’s record in the Big 12, the league he was hired to be competitive in. Holgorsen was 27-25.

Brown’s career record against Top Ten teams is 0-6; his record against AP Top 20 teams is 4-20.

The sample size is big enough to draw conclusions from and they aren’t good.

But there’s more to being a coach in today’s world than just winning. In the end, true, it’s all that matters, but he has built a culture, not a dynasty.

Remember the days when you checked the police reports as often as the football scores to see how WVU had done over the weekend. Arrests were a regular occurrence, and remember when there were academic casualties?

Now, players spend more time at WVU’s Children’s Hospital visiting sick kids than they do in jail. They graduate from school. Neal Brown brings in good kids, makes them better.

He’s honored the traditions, adopted the state and what it stands for and the school and what it stands for as his own.

They’d have been creating statues and naming streets after him if he had won.

If they could get rid of Bill Stewart, who was a good man and had many of the same qualities as Brown, certainly Brown is vulnerable.

But we are at a time in college sports where the financial statement is as important as the box score … and it’s changing all the time. WVU isn’t sure it can afford to fire Brown while many of its fans are saying they may not be able to afford to keep him.

With 40,000 in the stands for Senior Day – yes, the weather was awful, the opponent was 4-6 and they haven’t been winning at home – there was a statement being made from the fan base.

It would have been easy if Brown and WVU had lost, but they won. They played well. The change Brown made in a defensive coordinator seems to have been taking hold, there were future stars like Josiah Trotter, Hudson Clement, Jahiem White and CJ Donaldson performing on the field.

If he happens to win that game at Texas Tech and then wins a bowl game, you would be firing a coach who over the past two years would have compiled a 17-9 overall record with a 12-6 Big 12 Conference record.

Are they going in the right direction?

The Mountaineers are.

Are they where they want to be and, more important, where you want them to be? No.

What happens if you fire him? How long does the next “climb” take? How many of those future stars leave? How many new stars can a new coach bring in?

Will it cost more to fire a coach who seems to be on the upswing, who you would want your son to play for, who has been good for the school and the state?

OK, I’ve talked enough.

Now, it’s WVU athletic director Wren Baker who has the floor, and whatever I may say, whatever you may say, isn’t going to have any effect whatsoever on the decision that inevitably has to be made.