Morgantown, West Virginia- According to this CBS article: https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/rankings/cbs-sports-rankings/, West Virginia is ranked as the 63rd best team in the country. The article shows that Marshall, Troy, Tulane, Pitt, SMU, etc. are all better than the Mountaineers.
It makes me wonder; How far has West Virginia football dropped?
Even though the Mountaineers were averaging about 6-8 wins per year under Dana Holgorsen, at least he had us ranked, and pre-season ranked at that almost every single year. Now, I am not defending Holgorsen in any way. He is doing TERRIBLY at Houston, but at least he had us in the national spotlight. Neal Brown can’t even do that.
Through four years, Brown has not had us ranked ONCE! I will list off the Head Coaches in the Big 12 who have been ranked that are on their fourth year or less:
- Chris Klieman – Kansas State (Year Four) He has been ranked in EVERY SEASON that he has been there.
- Dave Aranda – Baylor (Year Three) He turned a 2-7 program into a winning and HIGHLY RANKED program by year 2 at Baylor.
- Sonny Dykes – TCU (Year ONE) Dykes has TCU (which has been a dumpsterfire since 2017) into a 5-0 program and RANKED coming off a win against Oklahoma.
- Lance Leipold – Kansas (Year TWO) We all know how bad Kansas has been, both historically and in modern times (besides 2007-09). In year TWO, Kansas is ALREADY 5-0 and RANKED!!!! If someone can do that at Kansas, then why can’t it happen at West Virginia?
We are in year four of the Neal Brown experiment, and we still are yet to be ranked, or have anywhere near a successful season. If all these coaches can turn programs around in less than four years, someone can certainly turn it around here.
We are worse than teams like Marshall and Troy (where Neal came from). We need to do better than total mediocrity.
