West Virginia fires football coach Neal Brown after 6 seasons in Morgantown
The day after the end of the 2024 college football regular season has claimed another coaching casualty.
West Virginia has fired coach Neal Brown after six seasons at the school, the university announced Sunday.
The Mountaineers finished 6-6 this season, but lost two of their final three games, including a 52-15 drubbing at the hands of Texas Tech Saturday.
"Coach Brown is a great person, and he has served as a tremendous ambassador for West Virginia University," West Virginia athletic director Wren Baker said in a statement. "He led our storied program with class and integrity and always put in the hard work necessary to allow for success. We are grateful to Neal, his wife, Brooke, and their children for their contributions to our University, community and state, and we wish them the very best in their next endeavor."
Brown failed to make West Virginia a consistently relevant team in the Big 12, going 37-35 over his tenure and only once winning more than six games in a season — a 9-4 finish last season capped off by a victory in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.
After that season, Brown signed a one-year contract extension that included a $400,000 pay cut over the ensuing three seasons. Under the terms of the deal, Brown is owed 75% of his remaining salary.
Brown was hired by the Mountaineers and then-athletic director Shane Lyons following a stellar four-year run at Troy in which he went 31-8 in his final three seasons, from 2016-18.
He was unable to replicate that success at West Virginia, a former powerhouse in the Big East that has largely been mired in mediocrity in the Big 12 since joining the conference ahead of the 2012 season. The Mountaineers have finished a season with more than seven wins only four times in their 13 years in the Big 12, a mark they had reached in each of their final 10 years in the Big East.
Despite his extensive offensive background, Brown’s West Virginia teams only once finished among the top 40 FBS teams in scoring offense in a season. What would ultimately be his final Mountaineers squad was undone by a porous defense that was 106th among 134 FBS programs in scoring defense, allowing 31.1 points per game.