Neal Brown Addresses Transfers, In-House Solutions and Offers Idea to Fix the Portal

The NCAA Transfer Portal continues to be a hot topic surrounding college athletics, and no other fanbase may be more concerned than Mountaineers fans after losing two defensive starters to the transfer portal during winter workouts.

West Virginia football head coach Neal Brown started by reiterating his thoughts on the transfer portal.

"I'm not inherently against the transfer portal," he said. "We're going to benefit, and we're going to lose guys, just like everybody in the country that decides to do business in there. You're going to gain some, and you're going to lose some."

He did not go into detail on the departures, even when asked explicitly about starting linebacker Josh Chandler-Semedo. The senior declared he was returning for his final season. Then a month later announced he was entering the transfer portal.

"I think he's a good kid. I don't have anything negative to say. I don't think it serves myself or our program to get up here and talk about guys that left."

Brown did, however, provide his solution to the issue.

"Roster management is so key now, and it's not just about on the field - it's in the locker room as well," he said. "We just weren't in a good place after the bowl game, and so we've gone to work."

West Virginia had 18 defections since the start of the 2020 season. Currently, there are 62 players on scholarship with 12 signed commits waiting to arrive this summer, and Brown has seven scholarships available to fill roster needs. Nonetheless, Brown wants to give the younger guys the reps during spring practice, giving them a chance to earn the starting job.

"We're going through the winter and all these young guys in the secondary they've made improvements, but we need to see them play live football," said Brown. "They'll be another wave of significant people in the transfer portal after spring practice. Our thoughts were, 'let's go through the spring and let's see.' We may come out somewhere where we think we're going to have a potential need, and somebody may do better than we really anticipated. But it could be, 'Hey, they're ready to be a backup, not a starter. Let's go find a starter.' That's kind of how we're approaching it."

There is the underlying issue of players leaving the program. However, according to Brown, only two were unexpected, and it comes down to figuring out who is unhappy and planning accordingly.

"You do your best assuming," said Brown. "What you do is you have your scholarship roster and then you have potential flight risks. Because you have guys, for a couple of different reasons, maybe it's something going on at home they're having issues with that causes them to leave. Maybe it's somebody that if they don't get a starting job that you know either them or their parents are really going to push them to leave, so you got to kind of anticipate. Now, you hope it doesn't happen -in most cases, you hope it doesn't happen. The ones that are really hard are ones that come out of left field, and to our credit, we've probably had two of those."

"The attitude I've taken is 'Hey, we want to coach the kids that want to be here and so, let's take what we have and let's coach them up the best we can and let's create a great environment where they're excited. This is not a knock to anybody that's left but our locker room, they're hungry, they're excited, and they feel really good about what's down there and we have the ability to do that with those seven open spots," continued Brown.

If there is some good news, Brown mentioned all levels of college athletics were in "ongoing talks" on the transfer portal's availability and believes he has two good time frames when players could enter the portal.

"We've got to get into windows. First of all, let's call it what it is, it's free agency. In what other sport do you have free agency year around? We got to get it into windows, and it has to be feasible for the student-athlete and for the school."

"Two periods that make the most sense for me is, the month of December maybe it goes into mid-January. That's the first one. It's postseason, so you don't have guys that are leaving your roster during the season," adding a second period for the same reasons, stating "Mid-April through the month of May."

West Virginia will kick off spring practice on March 22 before the annual Gold and Blue Spring Game on April 23.

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