There’s a ton of negativity around us West Virginia football program right now, and rightly so. The Mountaineers have underperformed this season and have actually failed to truly turn the corner in Neal Brown’s six years as head coach.

There’s no escaping scrutiny with this fan base.

It won’t disappear or even decrease until the program starts producing better results and consistently. The Mountaineers have fallen short in three opportunities on the big stage this season, and if you include the Backyard Brawl it’s four.

Brown’s comments at Monday’s press conference following the loss to Iowa State it didn’t fit well It didn’t go over well with fans, and it certainly became the top running joke in the national media for the better part of a week. The negativity and pressure mounted after last Saturday’s blowout loss to Kansas State, dropping WVU to 3-4 on the season. No, the fans are not having fun and they’ve made it very clear.

On his weekly radio show with WVU play-by-play man Tony Caridi on Thursday night, Neal Brown spent about 15 minutes talking about the noise outside and how he, players and coaches should handle it and not take it personally.

“You want to coach and you want to play somewhere that matters. Just like Joe (Mazzulla) said, no one on the outside can put more pressure on you than the team, the players, the coaches. You want to be good. You have to sacrifice tons of time and energy to do that.” It hurts when things don’t go your way, you lose a game on Saturday and it’s not the same, I’m just saying it’s similar, it’s like a death, it’s Sunday, you’re grieving and you’re really demoralized and then after the press conference for me. You turn it around, you put it aside and then you get excited for the next game and that’s the preparation for Saturday’s game.

“But to me, the criticism… we lost two games, we played really bad in the second half, and the Iowa State game was a little bit planned and we didn’t get the result we wanted. So that criticism was fair. The fans want to win and they should win. I never take it personally. Most people don’t take it personally.” ‘I’m mad at the head coach, but they don’t really know me, so I don’t take it personally. They’re mad at the product, and that’s fair. They’re the people paying for the tickets, the college graduates. and if the company is not making money financially or paying dividends then you have the right to be upset and complain, I understand it’s not personal.

“For me, what I have to do with our staff and our players is to kind of sit it out and explain to them that this is normal. I can turn off social media. I’m in a bubble. Basically, Dax had a flag football game on Monday, so I was out in public for an hour And for two hours I’m out here in public and that’s it, I can be in my own bubble, not on social media. But our players don’t have that, they communicate that way. So I think you can’t be ignorant and just ignore that with them. There’s some really good things that come with it and there’s some really hard things that come with it and you’re going to get better because of it, let’s go out and do our job better. We don’t have apathy problem here.

“It’s a privilege to coach and it’s a privilege to play somewhere that matters. There are expectations and you want to go out and do the best you can because internally you want that to be your makeup. But for me as a coach, even with the frenzy last week about the press conference deal I said when we were trying, but it’s like there’s a different pressure here because you know you’re a source of hope for an entire state, there’s a certain level of pressure, you want to do good things for the state, you want to have a positive reputation for the state, and it’s a little bit different than some other places. .it’s going well, it’s really good and when things aren’t going well you’ll hear about it I think that’s fair and you have to be able to handle those situations.

“And I think about that all the time; we’re dealing with football here, Tony. And I think Joe (Mazzulla) even said that in his comments, like if you’re a cardiologist… I can imagine it’s pressure. If you’re in the armed forces, it’s real pressure. Like, it’s football , but that’s the point. Many other people are dealing with much harder things than we are dealing with.

“I should have said this when we were talking about state, but you want to be extremely successful because you owe it to the people before you. Like, this is a really proud program. We’ve had two undefeated teams come back with Coach Nehlen here and conference championships… you owe it to the people before you and You really want to do good things for them, too.”

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