photo by: Greg Hunter/Blue & Gold News
Mountaineer head coach Neal Brown looks at his practice sheet.
MORGANTOWN – Welcome to the summer of change in college athletics, which translates into a new era of college football.
After all, football is the engine that drives the world of college sports.
The revolution of which we all are a part of these days is at the moment of its reinvention.
We talk not about how the game is played on the field. This isn’t the introduction of the split-T or the wishbone formation. It isn’t the invention and spread of the forward pass.
This isn’t about Xs and Os. It’s about Sports being spelled $port$.
Instead of paying the players under the table, it’s about putting cash out there in the open. It’s about marketing and branding and big is better and trying to find out who runs the game and how it affects football as it is played at West Virginia University.
Change is in the air, and Neal Brown knows it, accepts it and is trying to use it to his and his team’s advantage.
That was why, when we sat with him this week to put together a series of articles about the changes that are raining down upon us, from a new playoff system to a bigger, flashier conferences that are currently out of balance, to a new way of recruiting and to a new player who at age 18 considers himself not an amateur athlete but a professional.
It takes everyone from fan to player to coach to athletic director to university president to, as Neal Brown put it during our talks that will be chronicled the next few days to “either adapt or die.”
That sounds harsh, yet is reality slapping everyone in the face.
It is as John Chambers, the West Virginia University alumni and benefactor who is former executive chairman CEO at Cisco Systems said to him during a conversation a few months back.
“I paraphrase,” Brown said. “But he said you must see the world as you find it. You can’t see the world how you want it to be.”
At West Virginia you may long for Pat White to be at quarterback or Bill Bergey at linebacker or Aaron Beasley at cornerback. You may want to be back in the Big East playing Pitt and Syracuse and Virginia Tech every year.
Ain’t happening. Brown’s message, taken from what he’s seen and what he’s heard from Chambers and Ken Kendrick, the other WVU alum who runs the Arizona Diamondbacks and founded the Country Roads Trust, which is the financial arm of today’s recruiting, is simple.
“Where the world is right now, it’s NIL. Revenue distribution (to players) is coming. You can long all you want for the world that used to be, but you have to treat the world as you find it,” Brown said.
“We’re trying to put West Virginia in the best possible position to move forward. Because of the Country Roads Trust, I think we’re maximizing our chances to do that,” he continued.
“For us, you have to find your niche. It’s no different than anyone who is selling a product. You have to find what works for you.”
It seems to be working for WVU. As Brown heads off for his summer vacation, he is coming off a 9-win season. His program is on the upswing and optimism reigns.
WVU is in a Power 4 conference, a conference that has entry into the new expanded 12-team playoff formula that will go into effect this year and has an attractive schedule that includes a visit to Mountaineer Field by Penn State.
“We found a pretty good rhythm,” Brown admits. “We have to continue to grow but we’re fortunate we have the people in our Country Roads Trust that we’re working with.”
In other words, they are adapting. The transfer portal has become a crucial aspect of recruiting, in a way challenging high school recruiting as the lifeline of a program.
But they must be ready to continue to change and grow, for it’s only a matter of time before the financial system will change, where revenue sharing with the players comes in.
“I would argue strongly that revenue distribution should have been going on for a long time,” Brown said.
In truth, had the NCAA adopted an “adapt or die” approach they could have controlled and negotiated a change in player compensation, instead of being pushed into court cases that recognized its greed and fought against change until it was forced upon them.
So now they have a transfer portal out of control, a pay system without regulation and that has a negative effect upon the product being put on the field.
“Right now, in the system we have, there’s no competitive balance,” Brown said. “Revenue distribution will allow more competitive balance.”
Brown argues it won’t take on the form of the NFL
“We won’t have a salary cap. It won’t be like the NFL, where everyone has the same salary cap. I do think it will give us the ability to have competitive balance.”
This, Brown acknowledges, is above his pay grade, but he knows he and his fellow coaches and players and agents must understand it for it to work.
“This is more for Wren than for me, but we have to figure out ways to generate more revenue,” he said, referring to athletic director Wren Baker. “We are going to have to do some things in our stadium – premium seating, suites, those kinds of things.”
So, look for advertising on uniforms, advertising on the field, a commercial name on the Coliseum.
And it isn’t just at the local level that this seek to increase income is being investigated, the Big 12 in negotiations to sell its conference name, serious talks being carried on with Allstate Insurance.
As the week goes on, we’ll look into the changes involving WVU football that are taking place at the moment. The new conference, a new respect after last year, an acceptance of Neal Brown as the coach to lead them into this new way of football life and the changes Neal Brown himself has undergone since replacing Dana Holgorsen in 2019.
