Former West Virginia head football coach Neal Brown may be back in a head coaching seat before long. According to Brett Vito of the Denton Record-Chronicle, Brown “has been among the prominent names to come up in connection with the job.”
Shortly after his firing a year ago, Brown’s name popped up as a potential candidate at a handful of schools, but nothing really ever materialized. Instead of getting right back into a head coaching gig, Brown waited it out before eventually joining Steve Sarkisian’s staff at Texas as a “Special Assistant to the Head Coach.”
After four years of falling well shy of expectations, Brown’s Mountaineers seemed to have turned a corner in 2024, winning nine games, playing meaningful games late in November. The 2023 campaign led to a reworked contract where he received a one-year extension, but forwent $400,000 in increases over the final three years of his deal to reinvest more money into the program, specifically to the coaching staff.
The 2024 season went downhill in a hurry after the Mountaineers blew a 10-point lead late in the Backyard Brawl to Pitt, lost a pair of highly anticipated home games to Iowa State and Kansas State, dropped another home game to Baylor a few weeks later, and then ended the season by getting thumped by Texas Tech, 52-15. Losing the final game of the season in that fashion may not have been what done him in, but it certainly made the decision for AD Wren Baker a lot easier. There was no way you could enter a seventh year after a disappointing end to a disappointing season.
Wren Baker, of course, spent time as the athletic director at North Texas and remains a supporter of the program from afar. It wouldn’t be all that far-fetched to think Baker has been asked about Neal and put in a good word for him. Despite the firing, Brown understood the move and talked about his respect for Baker in his final local interview. “I’ll say this, I love Wren Baker. And I know that’s a weird thing to say fresh off getting fired, but we have a great relationship. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him as a person and as an administrator. That’s a friendship that will go beyond West Virginia. I’m not bitter.
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