Brown’s WVU Tenure Bears Similarities to Several Others – West Virginia University Athletics

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – You would be hard pressed to find anyone associated with West Virginia University who wasn’t rooting for Neal Brown, including WVU vice president and director of athletics Wren Baker.
 
It was a somber day in the Athletics Department on Monday, after the news came out on Sunday afternoon that a leadership change was being made within the Mountaineer football program.
 
In the cold, hard business of college football, winning matters, and Brown’s 37-35 overall record put him squarely in purgatory. 
 
“It was a difficult couple of days,” is how Baker opened his Tuesday afternoon press conference with media at the Milan Puskar Center. “Coach Brown is a tremendous colleague and in many, many ways, what you want from a leader.
 
“He did a great job helping build the infrastructure of this program, and just a tremendous job making sure we are enriching the lives of young people,” Baker noted. “I’ve got tremendous respect for the class and integrity that he has shown. If I was to script out how you would want a couple of hard days to go, I couldn’t script it to be any better or classier than he’s been.” 
 
Brown’s best victory here was probably the 38-31, come-from-behind upset over 22^nd-ranked Iowa State on Oct. 10, 2021. That was the game when Bryce Ford-Wheaton made his spectacular, back-of-the-end zone reception to tie the game at 24, and then WVU rallied with two fourth-quarter scores to derail the Cyclones.
 
He also had a couple of memorable wins against Kansas State, one coming during his first year in 2019 at Snyder Family Stadium in Manhattan when WVU rallied from a 20-14, third-quarter deficit to win 24-20. Ford-Wheaton once again delivered the deciding score with a 50-yard touchdown reception with 11:27 left in the game.
 
Brown’s other outstanding victory against 16^th-ranked Kansas State came during the COVID year in 2020. The Mountaineer defense limited star running back Deuce Vaughn to only 22 yards and Will Howard, now quarterbacking the Ohio State Buckeyes, barely completed half of his 38 pass attempts with three interceptions in WVU’s runaway 37-10 victory.
 
A two-overtime win over Baylor earlier in the year was also noteworthy, as were rivalry game triumphs against Virginia Tech in 2021 and 2022, not to mention a Backyard Brawl win over Pitt at sold-out Milan Puskar Stadium in 2023.
 
Finally ending Oklahoma’s Big 12 dominance in the series in Morgantown in 2022 was also satisfying, as were wins against Oklahoma State that year and against Texas in 2021.
 
Brown’s best campaign came last year when his team posted nine wins – four in a row early against Duquesne, Pitt, Texas Tech and TCU, and then a three-game winning streak at the end that included a come-from-behind win at Baylor and a mayonnaise-drenching triumph over North Carolina in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte. 
 
The coaches ranked his West Virginia squad 25^th in their final poll of the season.
 
A come-from-behind victory over Army in the 2020 Liberty Bowl and the Duke’s Mayo Bowl win make Brown one of just five coaches in school history with multiple bowl victories, the others being Don Nehlen, Rich Rodriguez, Bill Stewart and Dana Holgorsen.
 
Brown also revitalized in-state recruiting by getting Spring Valley High’s Doug Nester out of the transfer portal and adding top in-state offensive line prospects Zach Frazier and Wyatt Milum. Frazier today is a rookie starting center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Nester on its practice squad, while Milum is expected to be a top NFL draft pick next spring.
 
“It has been a great honor to serve as West Virginia’s head football coach,” Brown said in a prepared statement released on his social media accounts earlier today. “I am extremely proud to be associated with all the incredible young men who were part of our program over the past six years.
 
“This team, like those before them, showed up every day, resilient, united, and determined. I love this group and know they will navigate this transition with class and integrity. Our family was proud to call West Virginia home.”
 
Each step Brown’s Mountaineer program took forward, however, also included steps backward, such as his team’s head-scratching Hail-Mary-pass loss at Houston against Holgorsen and a 39-point blowout defeat at 17^th-ranked Oklahoma last year. 
 
Earlier this season, West Virginia’s puzzling fourth-quarter collapse at Pitt was a loss that was extremely difficult for die-hard Mountaineer fans to absorb.
 
West Virginia’s recent struggles in season-opening games against Maryland in 2021, Pitt in 2022 and Penn State in 2023 and 2024 were deflating, as was Brown’s inability to win homecoming contests.
 
WVU’s difficulties against nationally ranked and above-.500 teams are well-documented, and this year’s 6-6 mark is basically a microcosm of Brown’s six-season tenure at West Virginia. 
 
All six wins came against teams that finished their seasons with losing records, while the six losses were to teams with winning marks that are either playing in bowl games or are still in contention for the College Football Playoffs.
 
Thus, Brown’s two-wins-over-.500 record probably puts him in line with the likes of WVU coaches Marshall “Little Sleepy” Glenn in the late 1930s, Bill Kern in the 1940s, or perhaps more recently, Gene Corum in the early-to-mid-1960s.
 
Glenn only coached three seasons at West Virginia before pursuing a medical career in the state’s Eastern Panhandle. His first team, in 1937, included a 7-6 win over Texas Tech in the Sun Bowl.
 
Kern got five seasons at WVU, separated by three years of military service during World War II. His Mountaineer coaching record was 24-23-1, although he left on a high note by upsetting Pitt 17-2 in 1947 in one of the biggest wins of that era.
 
Afterward, Kern never coached another college football game in any capacity.
 
Gene Corum, known around town as “Gentleman Gene,” spent six years at WVU after following the legendary Art “Pappy” Lewis.
 
A disenchanted Lewis quit right before spring football practice in 1960, which enabled him to protect his coaching staff when West Virginia had no other choice but to promote Corum to head coach. Corum was well-liked on campus and civic-oriented in the community, much like Brown.
 
However, Corum’s coaching tenure began ominously in 1960 with the only winless campaign in school history, although his teams progressively improved until winning eight games in 1962, including the first-ever victory at Syracuse’s Archbold Stadium.
 
And like Brown, Corum faced some challenging schedules that included annual games against nationally ranked Syracuse and Penn State, arch-rival Pitt and nonconference matchups against Illinois, Vanderbilt, Oregon, Oregon State, Indiana, Navy and Kentucky.
 
Corum had three winning seasons and three losing ones, and his final game at Mountaineer Field against George Washington in 1965 saw just 16,000 spectators in the stands. 
 
His teams had eventually grown stale with the Mountaineer fan base.
 
Corum, like Glenn and Kern, never coached again in any capacity and spent the remainder of his professional career working as an instructor in the School of Physical Education. He did briefly serve as the school’s interim athletics director between Dick Martin and Fred Schaus.
 
Yet unlike those other coaches, Neal Brown is not finished with college football, and could be coaching somewhere else, perhaps even as soon as 2025. 
 
“Mountaineer Nation is a dedicated and passionate fan base,” Brown said. “With Wren’s leadership, and the foundation we worked so hard to create, I know the program is poised to embrace the challenges of today’s ever-changing football climate and make the investments necessary to advance.”
 
Brown’s statement concluded, “To our team, stay focused and go win our bowl game! Let’s GO!”
 
At 44, Brown is still young enough to make his mark in the game, much like College Football Hall of Famer Frank Cignetti did following his unfulfilling, four-year tenure at West Virginia that ended in 1979. 
 
The late Cignetti was another good guy everyone around here rooted for to succeed.
 
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen, and that’s sometimes part of the unforgiving, cold, hard business of college football.