WVU head football coach Neal Brown looks on during a game from last season. He believes he has the talent to succeed this season.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second installment of a three-part series on WVU football. Part 3 will be published on Friday.
MORGANTOWN — The lifeline of football success comes in roster building, recruiting talent from high school and through transfers. This is something Neal Brown hit hard at West Virginia this year and seemed to be quite successful at.
The talent is on hand, he believes, to move forward in such a crucial year after having only one winning season in his first four and failing to make a bowl game last year.
“It’s too early to tell, but I watch our guys and I feel really good about our athleticism; the best I’ve felt,” he said.
But if he is to survive this season, a year in which he faces a brutal schedule that opens on the road at Penn State and then hosts rival Pitt in its third game before venturing into the 14-team version of the Big 12, he has to mold it into a team.
Brown, since coming on the scene in 2019, has been big on team building, creating a family atmosphere, pushing academics, citizenship, leadership.
It is a long-term approach but he is on a one-year leash under Wren Baker right now and one wonders why all of the effort isn’t concentrated on turning this into a career-saving season for him.
“It goes back to why you do it,” Brown answered when that question was put to him on Monday of this week. “Even with all the money involved, we’re still dealing with the age bracket 17 to 23. That five to six-year period right there is huge with the growing that takes place.
“It comes back to what is really, really important. I think development in that five- to six-year range is important. I really believe if you can develop the whole person, if you can develop relationships … ”
Brown pauses here and admits he knows no matter how hard he pushes this aspect, he is not going to get through to every player, not going to keep everyone happy.
“You are going to lose some,” he said, “but you are doing it because you believe in a development process. You are getting these guys in a critical stage in their life and you want them to leave here better. With that in mind, what I had to come to terms with is when you lose someone, it really hurts … even if they leave for money.
“You’re sitting there thinking, ‘What could I do differently? What could I do better?’ I still think relationships matter, development process matters. If you can grow relationships with these guys they see you putting in an investment in time, energy and money, over the long haul, I think will pay off.”
Brown worries not so much about his long haul, which will be decided this season, but about the players, and believes he will get more out of them if he puts more into them.
There have been changes that had to be made since he became WVU’s head coach, replacing Dana Holgorsen.
“On team building, we changed our model. The way college football used to work was you would break the year into five parts: winter, spring, summer, fall camp, season. It used to be January was your winter. You were going to test them. You were going to make them sacrifice. You would develop mental toughness and you wanted your team to come together because that was going to be the heart of your team.”
But with the portal and a different recruiting calendar, things had to be distributed differently.
After the winter there was spring ball, where you would get most of the guys who were going to play for you their repetitions. Most freshmen came in for fall camp.
“Now, what you used to do in the winter has gone to summer because the freshmen and transfers come in. Your summer is your first opportunity to have your whole team,” Brown explained. “Now you need to create sacrifice, develop mental toughness; the things you used to do in the winter.”
Logic would tell you that the busiest time for the coach is during the season but Brown says that’s not the case.
“The two busiest times in coaching now are December and the summer. In December you hopefully are getting ready for a bowl game, trying to sign a high school class, trying to hold onto your current roster and make some acquisitions through the portal,” he said.
“In June, you have camps, looking more one and two years down the road. You have official visits at this time of year. We host close to 40 or 50 in official visits in June. And you have this really critical time with your team.
“You think about the summer as off time, but you have the strength and conditioning aspect of it, where you are trying to get bigger, stronger, faster … but there’s also this deal of shared sacrifice where you have to overcome some things.
“In addition, you are working on football stuff such as skill development and fundamentals, along with summer classroom time, where you can really teach schemes and you have OTAs where you can get repetition in the skills.
“There’s also leadership development. You used to do that in January but you really don’t know then who would be here or not.”
All of that is in the summer but you must also be aware that fall camp is right around the corner.
“This has become year-round for the players, too. You only get three weeks off in May,” Brown said. “You have to be careful over the summer not to overdo it.”
What Brown’s staff does is coach them hard for four and a half weeks, then get a little down time, then begin fall camp to make final decisions on who plays and spend the last two weeks working toward the opening game.