Surprise, surprise. The West Virginia Mountaineers lost again to a ranked team on Saturday night, dropping their record to 3-17 against such opponents during the Neal Brown era.

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

All joking aside, there isn’t much more to say about this, neither me nor anyone else. The balance speaks for itself.

There are examples after examples of turnarounds in the first, second or third year all over college football, but it’s the sixth year and WVU continues to do well with results like you saw last night.

Did injuries to Garrett Greene, Jahiem White and Wyatt Milum play a role in the game? I mean, it didn’t help matters, but I’m not sure there’s much change for them on the field. The game was winding down when WVU botched its fourth down attempt at the end of the first half.

Why doesn’t anyone talk about it?

Neal Brown took way too long to get the play call, mind you after a timeout that left Garrett Greene very little time to relay the call, line up, see what the defense is presenting you and make a play. There was absolutely no time for adjustments or time for WVU to get Kansas State to jump offside to give them a first down.

Nobody has a problem playing on 4th and 1. The problem is that the play comes so late that you never give your quarterback or your offense a realistic shot.

Greene has previously struggled in the passing game with the 15th-ranked pass defense in a 16-team Big 12 league. He made several poor decisions when throwing the football, and toward the end of the half, Greene running the ball was the only offense the Mountaineers had.

They couldn’t get Jahiem White going. They couldn’t get CJ Donaldson going. It was chaos. By the way, White and Donaldson combined for 2.7 yards per carry that night. So no, I don’t think a healthy Jahiem White or Garrett Greene would have made a difference in this game.

My main argument on the injuries is that Neal Brown doesn’t get a pass for this loss because a handful of key players are out. What did he prove in these games against ranked teams to convince everyone watching last night that they were going to win this game after a terrible first half?

I’m not giving him carte blanche. Absolutely not.

Folks, barring a miraculous end to the season where WVU wins, wins a few convincing games, wins their bowl game AND gets some help along the way, the Mountaineers are on track to go six full seasons without having a single one Week into the season AP Top 25, putting them in the same discussion as Rutgers, Vanderbilt and Texas Tech.

Seriously? This is the company you’re staying with for six years?

Very few coaches in college football can put Neal Brown on a leash due to the lack of results. A nine-win season on an extremely tight schedule shouldn’t “buy more time” to turn the program around. The Mountaineers are facing their fourth (!) losing season in six years. Fourth. That doesn’t happen in West Virginia.

I’m showing my age here, but since the year I was born in 1996, West Virginia has had six losing seasons. Neal Brown is responsible for three of them.

Frank Cignetti had a brutal four-year 17-27 run from 1976 to 1979, but to find a six-year stretch that rivals what the Mountaineers are currently in, you have to go to Gene Corum’s 1960 tenure was -65, when he went 29-30-2. Neal Brown is currently 34-33 years old.

I will leave this room the same way I did last week – at some point the results, the recording and the product on the field will be too loud to ignore.

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