President Gee Explains the Decision to Retain Neal Brown
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Today was about introducing Wren Baker as West Virginia University's new athletic director. However, the main reason Baker is now in the seat that Shane Lyons once occupied is due to the current state of the football program.
So although many questions were posed to Baker and university president E. Gordon Gee about the direction of the athletic department, there were questions about the football program, some specifically regarding head coach Neal Brown and the decision to retain him.
President Gee gave a long winded answer as to why he felt it was the right decision to allow Brown to be in charge of the football program.
"We had a challenging football year, as we all know. One of the things that I started realizing is the fact that we really did put our football coach in a very challenging position because we played two Power Five teams right off the bat. The other thing is, the recent process came out noting that we had the toughest football schedule in the country. And the fact that we've gone 5-7 in a very competitive environment has been something that obviously I take a lot of pride in because given everything, I think we played rather well.
"Secondly of all, talked to a lot of people. One of the advantages of being a university president for 42 years, I have a lot of folks. I've worked with coaches and others. Almost to a person they believe that our coach had great opportunities in front of him and that we needed to try to provide the kind of support and structure that would allow him to be successful. And then, one of the things that was very interesting to me was that we interviewed these athletic directors - to a person, each one of them asked that question and then when I would ask them the question back, they to a person said exactly what Wren said. That they would love to have a chance to work with our football program and create a very positive result. All of that together was very important. In the end, we did talk with Wren but he had already indicated his willingness to work with the coach and that was very important to me.
"We're very grateful to have Neal here. And the one thing I want to say in addition to everything else, is that few people have connected more clearly with West Virginia and West Virginians than has Neal Brown. He came and embraced us and this is a moment in which we're going to embrace each other now."
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