Texas Tech key for Brown’s effort to keep job at WVU
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia showed last week it could beat Backyard Brawl rival Pitt.
That was good for the team.
Now, the Mountaineers must show they can beat Texas Tech on Saturday.
That would be good for the coach.
Neal Brown is coaching for his future this year.
After four years of asking the faithful WVU fans to “trust the climb,” it felt as if they were still at base camp when athletic director Wren Baker was hired to replace Shane Lyons as athletic director. Many felt he would come in and clean house in a football program that today stands 24-26 under Brown.
After all, no one believes you should be paying a football coach $4 million a year at West Virginia for a sub-.500 record, especially when they could do no better than 14-21 in Big 12 play during Brown’s tenure.
Baker took a more conservative move than reaching directly into the broom closet. Faced with a difficult financial situation where buying Brown’s contract out could have a troubling effect on the athletic department’s bottom line in these trying financial times, Baker opted to spend the year “evaluating” Brown’s coaching performance.
It would not, he said, be merely based on the final record, on whether or not he reached a third bowl game, but instead about how he went about his business.
It was a challenge that seemed to be doomed from the start, especially as expectations hit rock bottom coming into this season.
WVU was picked to finish 14th and last in the newly expanded Big 12, something Brown seemed to take personally as he virtually guaranteed his Mountaineers would prove the “experts” wrong.
“Looking forward to proving everybody wrong on that front,” Brown said at Big 12 media day. “We won’t finish there.”
And so it was that he ventured forward, despite having produced the worst four-year record as a Mountaineer coach in nearly half a century, since Frank Cignetti went 17-27 from 1976 to 1979 before Don Nehlen came forth to rescue the program.
Brown’s team had never been ranked at WVU — the combination of all of that left what they call Mountaineer Nation in a rebellious mood as the year started.
They were faced with an immediate challenge that they could not possibly be ready for under any coach, taking a team with a new quarterback, a new offensive coordinator and a transfer-heavy roster into the season against the nation’s seventh-ranked team, Penn State, on its home field before more than 105,000 fans.
The Mountaineers lost and the rumbling began to grow louder.
But Brown held steadfast to his belief he had an improved team, a team that wasn’t the worst in the conference and that victory over Pitt offered a ray of optimism that he was right.
But it was obvious that this was not an elite Pitt team and there wasn’t much on the offensive side of the football that screamed out progress … but that 221-yard, 17-point performance must carry an asterisk as starting quarterback Garett Greene went down six plays into the game, forcing talented but inexperienced Nicco Marchiol to take over.
This was nothing like Pat White replacing an injured Adam Bednarik in mid-game against a ranked Louisville team in 2005 and leading WVU to a come-from-behind 46-44 victory in three overtimes, igniting one of greatest eras in Mountaineer history.
But Marchiol found a way to win, and that in and of itself was a welcome event, just as his last relief performance had beaten Oklahoma State on a miserable, rainy day to close out last season.
This Saturday’s challenge for Brown may be even more impactful on the coach’s future should he and the Mountaineers beat Texas Tech than it was for the Backyard Brawl victory because it would carry a strong message to the administration and the Big 12.
Brown wasn’t just blowing smoke when he promised a better team than most expected.
To begin with, he has never beaten Texas Tech in four previous meetings.
“Texas Tech has had our number. They’ve beaten us four times in a row, and they’ve beaten us the last two at Mountaineer Field. We can’t hide from it,” Brown said.
“This is the first opportunity for this team in Big 12 Conference play to prove the so-called experts wrong,” he added.
This game is all about messaging, really. It is a game in which Brown can send a message to his players that they really are good enough to win within the conference right now; to the Big 12 that it better not underestimate his team; to his fans that they need to come out and back the Mountaineer football team as it once again will be the place to be on Saturdays, and to Wren Baker that he finally is ready to begin moving toward the top of the mountain.
Now Baker shouldn’t be ready to tear up his contract and offer him a new one if he wins this game, nor should he go through with a knee-jerk reaction that leads to giving Brown the boot.
He chose to play out this season and see where it leads and that now is the only road open to him.
It’s up to Brown and his players to negotiate their way through the potholes that lie ahead.
That is the only negotiation that should matter right now.