Report: Neal Brown Passes on Charlotte Head Coach Job

Neal Brown will not be the new head coach of Charlotte, as the Charlotte Post’s Cameron Williams reported Wednesday morning that the former WVU head coach has passed on the 49ers’ job.

Sources tell me that Neal Brown has also passed on the @CharlotteFTBL job.

Brown was at West Virginia prior to being dismissed as head coach this week.

— Cameron Williams (@camwillsports) December 4, 2024

Charlotte was one of several jobs Brown was linked to soon after WVU fired him on Sunday.

Another program Brown will also not be coaching is his alma mater, UMass. Rutger defensive coordinator Joe Harasymiak reportedly took the job Tuesday morning.

Brown was linked to the Minutmen’s job due to his past connection with the university, having played and graduated from there in 2002. No concrete report of interest on either side ever actually emerged, however.

According to Football Scoop and other sources, a few options are already lining up for Brown, the 44-year-old Kentucky native. Football Scoop is reporting that Brown is the “central figure” of Appalachian State’s search.

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 the 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.

For a related story, Wren Baker details when he decided to fire Neal Brown.