More Information Revealed About WVU’s Separation Agreement with Neal Brown

As Neal Brown searches for his next opportunity, we now know more news about his departure from West Virginia. In a final good deed, Brown decided to decline contract incentives he earned at WVU so they could be redirected to his staff.

According to the separation agreement Brown reached with WVU director of athletics Wen Baker, Brown “elected to waive any incentives related to the 2024 bowl game and those incentives will be distributed to the football staff, as requested by Coach.”

For example, Brown could have received an extra $50,000 simply for making it a bowl game outside of the College Football Playoff. Of course, Brown was fired on Dec. 1 and Chad Scott, who was then serving as offensive coordinator under Brown and has since been moved to running backs coach on Rich Rodriguez’s staff, was named the interim head coach and coached the Frisco Bowl.

With Scott running the show, the Mountaineers lost the Frisco Bowl 42-37 and ended the 2024 season with a 6-7 overall record.

When Brown arrived in West Virginia in 2019, he was thought of as a young coach on the rise. He had just wrapped up a successful tenure at Troy, one highlighted by getting the Trojans ranked by Associated Press, something he would never accomplish at WVU.

The Neal Brown era for West Virginia concluded with a 37-35 overall record and two bowl wins. Brown’s struggles against ranked opponents and failures in big games embodied the darkest six-year period for the program since before Don Nehlen took over in 1980.

Michael Longo / PSN

And even though Baker initially decided to retain Brown despite missing a bowl game all together in 2022, he finally pulled the trigger on the heels of the disappointments of the 2024 season, one that followed hype and expectations of contending for a Big 12 title, not crawling to bowl eligibility.

Any good faith Brown earned with the success of 2023 was permanently tarnished throughout his final season.

WV Sports Now obtained the information in this story from a copy of the agreement between WVU and Neal Brown. 

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