Between The Eers: More Money, More Talent, More Winning
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Good morning, everybody.
00:10 Scott McCallum here with Mountain Deers.
00:12 Now, this is between the ears.
00:14 In the last couple of days,
00:15 we've been talking about the NCAA transfer portal,
00:17 and that's not gonna change here today.
00:20 I've talked a lot about kind of what West Virginia
00:23 needs to do, maybe some areas they need to focus on.
00:27 And today, again, the one thing I've also kind of mentioned
00:31 really a lot the last two days has been
00:34 the need to build a stronger foundation
00:37 or a stronger membership with the Country Roads Trust.
00:42 And the one thing I'm gonna really kind of hone in on today
00:47 is the folks that say, "I'm not going to support Neil Brown
00:55 because the product is not good.
00:59 It's not been good."
01:01 That's purely your own opinion.
01:06 I think a lot of people within this fan base
01:10 will take an eight-win season.
01:12 Yes, nine, 10, 11 wins would be great,
01:15 but if you look over the history of West Virginia football,
01:19 those kinds of seasons don't happen very often.
01:23 It's more around your six, seven, eight-ish.
01:27 Eight wins is a pretty darn good year for the Mountaineers.
01:30 And considering, again, where they were picked,
01:34 I don't know how you can be upset about it.
01:38 And I think with the chance to win a ninth game
01:40 in the bowl against North Carolina would really,
01:44 I think, maybe go a long way in helping people commit,
01:50 I guess, to this coaching staff
01:55 and to this program's trajectory.
01:58 But you can't, two things with this,
02:03 you can't just hop on board when things are great, right?
02:09 When you go through those years where you win 33 games
02:17 in three years with Pat White,
02:18 where you go and you have the Orange Bowl year
02:23 with Geno Smith and Tavon Austin,
02:25 or you have the start to the year
02:27 like they did in 2018 with Will Greer,
02:29 and they made it all the way up into the top,
02:31 I think, six of the playoff ranking,
02:34 and then just go away.
02:36 That's not how this works, okay?
02:40 That would be what you define as a bandwagon fan.
02:44 You have to be on there for the good and the bad,
02:46 and you've got to also now help get this team
02:49 out of what you may define as the bad and into the good.
02:54 So again, everyone's kind of perspective on this
02:59 is different, and 8-1 season could be great to some,
03:02 it could be average to some, it could be below average.
03:05 But for the first time in the history of college sports,
03:11 fans are now able to help change
03:14 the future of their program.
03:17 By donating to the trust,
03:19 you are helping create a bigger money pool
03:24 for the coaches to essentially offer,
03:27 again, they can't technically handle the money,
03:30 but they can offer that as a resource for these players.
03:35 You want bigger players, again,
03:36 like I mentioned yesterday with the FCS thing,
03:39 if you want those Power Five transfers,
03:41 those Power Five starters, those proven Power Five starters,
03:44 you got to have money.
03:46 If you don't, you're going to be banking on some G5 guys,
03:50 some D2s, some FCS.
03:52 That's going to be kind of the makeup
03:56 of who you're targeting.
03:57 So you can't just rely on them figuring it out
04:04 without any help.
04:06 You've got to be able to help by donating,
04:11 and if you can't donate, spreading the word,
04:15 and for those that can donate, for them to take part.
04:19 Because the reality of it is,
04:22 this thing is only going to be as good as the trust is.
04:27 This football team, this basketball team,
04:31 this is every sport that the trust deals with.
04:34 So again, and that's my second point here.
04:37 Even if you're not a believer in Neil Brown,
04:40 this goes to the soccer team
04:44 that's playing in the College Cup.
04:45 This goes to the women's basketball team
04:47 who is undefeated and just beat a top 25 Penn State team.
04:50 This goes to the baseball team
04:53 who will be changing over from Randy Mazey
04:55 after this season, but have had a lot of success.
04:58 They just won the Big 12 Conference,
05:00 a share of it last year.
05:02 They're going to have potential
05:03 with the number one overall pick in JJ Weatherholt.
05:05 This goes all across the board.
05:09 A women's soccer program that has been successful
05:11 for many years under Nikki Izzo-Brown.
05:13 You're not just donating to football.
05:16 You can donate to just football.
05:18 There is a specific way that you can go onto the site
05:21 and just pick, yes, I want to click
05:23 just donate to football.
05:24 I believe, that's what I've been told.
05:26 And I saw a screenshot of it, so I may be wrong,
05:29 but I think that is true.
05:32 But you're donating to the athletic program in a way,
05:37 because again, it's not directly to WVU,
05:39 but you get the point.
05:40 You want to help change the future of WVU athletics.
05:47 Now is your opportunity.
05:48 And if you believe Neil Brown hasn't put
05:53 the best product out there, again, that's your opinion,
05:57 but you can help make that product better
06:00 by going and being a part of that trust
06:04 and donating 18 bucks a month,
06:07 I think is one of the offers that they get.
06:10 That's like well under 50 cents a day.
06:15 I don't know what the math comes out to,
06:17 I'm going to say 30 some cents.
06:18 That's not a lot of money.
06:21 18 bucks for a month, that's one meal to wherever.
06:26 Outback.
06:32 And if that's all you have to do
06:34 to help make this program stronger,
06:37 I would strongly encourage the fans to take part in that.
06:41 We all want to have a voice, we all want to have an opinion,
06:45 we all want to share the frustrations, of course.
06:48 But to be able to have that, you've got to be able
06:54 to put your money where your mouth is, essentially.
06:57 And you have to take this as a golden opportunity,
07:01 take this as a good thing.
07:03 This is not me preaching to the choir or anything,
07:06 this is just me trying to shed light on a situation
07:10 and telling fans, look, you can be a part
07:13 of either changing this thing for the better
07:15 or making it stronger, however you want to look at it,
07:18 by becoming a part of this thing.
07:21 And as I hammered home yesterday,
07:24 these FCS offers that you see going out
07:28 will start to dwindle and dwindle and dwindle.
07:31 As there's more money available.
07:33 There always will be a few FCS guys,
07:35 just purely because of the guys being that talented
07:37 and there's going to be other Power Five programs
07:39 in on those guys as well.
07:41 But the more money you have,
07:45 the more top tier talent you're going to attract,
07:47 not only in the portal,
07:49 but in the high school recruiting ranks as well.
07:51 So it was a quick episode today,
07:53 but I've talked a lot about the transfer portal
07:55 the last couple of days, I didn't want to go too deep in it,
07:58 but I did have to get that off my chest.
08:00 We'll be back tomorrow.
08:03 Think I'm going to bring a guest on, might be Chris,
08:06 not really sure yet, haven't nailed down anything.
08:08 But we will move,
08:10 I don't know if we'll move quite off the portal yet.
08:14 We're going to talk maybe biggest transfer portal needs
08:16 at some point.
08:17 I do have an article up on that on the site
08:19 at Mountaineers Now.
08:20 So if you want to check that out, it's already out.
08:23 By the way, Neil Brown confirmed where those needs are.
08:28 I'll put the article out,
08:29 I want to say like Monday or whatever.
08:33 And then the next day, Neil Brown came out and said,
08:35 this is where we're kind of looking.
08:37 And I'll go in depth on that.
08:39 We may even share the clip of what he said.
08:41 So we may or may not move off the portal tomorrow,
08:45 but after that, we're definitely moving off.
08:47 We're going to look into some other things
08:49 with the football team.
08:50 We're even talking some basketball on here.
08:52 So we're going to try and do this five days a week,
08:55 Monday through Friday in the off season,
08:58 as best as we can, we'll try and stick to that.
09:00 So thank you guys for watching today's episode
09:03 of Between the Ears.
09:04 Make sure you hit that subscribe button
09:06 at Mountaineers Now on YouTube
09:07 and give us a follow at the same handle on X.
09:10 Thank you guys.
09:11 We'll be back tomorrow morning.
09:12 Take care.
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