Between The Eers: A New Deal for Neal?
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00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 >> Ren Baker is one busy son of a gun.
00:13 He's got a men's basketball coaching search coming up.
00:16 He's got to fend off all these rumors about the Missouri AD opening.
00:21 And he's also apparently in talks with Neil Brown,
00:25 the head football coach WVU on a new contract.
00:29 >> I'm Skylar Callahan, this is Between the Ears.
00:33 A good Tuesday morning to everybody tuning into this morning's episode.
00:37 And yeah, so Neil Brown potentially getting a new contract.
00:42 As word surfaced on Metro News' Sportsline, Greg Hunter talked about
00:47 that that's something to keep an eye on, that it's something that's kind of
00:52 been leaking out a little bit.
00:55 And that something could get done at some point this week.
01:00 This sparked a little bit of a controversy on social media,
01:06 as you would expect.
01:08 And look, I'm here to tell you there's nothing to worry about.
01:13 This is very normal, even after just one really good season or
01:20 one decent season in most cases.
01:24 You can't have a coach on a contract with three years left.
01:31 It's just not the way that you should operate, number one.
01:37 And number two, from the head coach's perspective, it's kind of hard for
01:42 him to go out and recruit to high school kids that
01:47 are gonna be here through 27, potentially longer.
01:51 And he's only under contract through 26.
01:55 So I think the biggest thing is you gotta have job security when you go and
02:00 pitch to these kids in recruiting, not just high school, but
02:04 transfer portal and so on and so forth.
02:07 But also too, it's not just because they won nine games.
02:13 And I think that's something that people are misunderstanding,
02:19 is Ren Baker sees they win nine games and
02:23 all of a sudden that erases everything that happened before that.
02:28 That's not the case at all.
02:30 When you look at these contracts, in large part,
02:37 most of them are for the optics, right?
02:41 It's for one, the years really only mean anything for
02:46 the recruits because they don't really understand the debts and
02:51 everything else that comes with the contracts.
02:55 They don't really understand the buyouts and all that.
02:58 They just look at it and say, hey, this coach is here for this amount of years.
03:03 So you check that box.
03:06 Secondly, the buyout right now is not in favor of West Virginia.
03:13 So if something were to happen, something were to go sideways,
03:17 the program just takes a nosedive and all of a sudden they're back to what we had
03:22 seen the first four years into this regime.
03:24 If you move on from Neil now, it's gonna cost you a pretty penny.
03:30 Obviously that gets cheaper over the next two years.
03:35 Think whittles it all the way down to roughly three or
03:37 four million bucks by the end of his contract.
03:40 But at that point, you might as well just hold on to him.
03:44 In this new deal, potential new deal that's gonna happen,
03:49 I expect it to be very school friendly.
03:54 But it's also going to be very Neil friendly in that he's going to get
03:59 probably a pretty significant bump.
04:03 I'm not saying he's gonna be the most highest paid.
04:07 He's not gonna be the highest paid coach out there.
04:09 He's not gonna be the highest paid coach in the big 12 or anything like that.
04:12 But he's probably gonna get a couple million dollars
04:16 onto his annual average salary, and he should.
04:20 I mean, look, Lance Leipold at Kansas, he just got a new deal.
04:25 And I think he was around the same ballpark as what Neil was making,
04:31 which is about 4 million bucks.
04:33 He's now up over 7 at Kansas.
04:38 And this is really the part that I think people don't really look at.
04:44 This is the competitive side of it.
04:49 And again, it's not so much that West Virginia or
04:53 Rent Baker is afraid and shivering in their boots that they're gonna lose
04:58 Neil Brown to somebody else, that's not the case at all.
05:04 But with this, you're probably gonna have to sit down and
05:09 talk about the assistant coach pool, which needs to be raised.
05:13 But if you're raising the assistant coach pool,
05:17 you also wanna raise the head coach's salary.
05:20 If Lance Leipold is making 7 million bucks at Kansas,
05:25 a team and a program that has been in the mud for how many years?
05:31 They had one good year and all of a sudden they're the darling of college football.
05:36 If they're gonna invest that kind of money, why kill West Virginia?
05:41 So no, it has nothing to do with the fact that they just won nine games one time in
05:48 this regime, and they feel okay with moving forward.
05:52 That's not the case at all.
05:55 As a matter of fact, Lance Leipold just won nine games at Kansas.
06:01 Now you could argue that that's a much better coaching job,
06:05 considering what he took over, and I wouldn't argue with that.
06:10 That is one of the best coaching jobs, if not the best coaching job,
06:15 in college football.
06:16 However, you gotta remain competitive.
06:21 And $4 million a year for a school that wants to compete and
06:28 wants to be in the picture in the Big 12 every single year,
06:34 you've gotta raise that a little bit.
06:36 And again, it's not just because the nine wins,
06:42 it's not because they're afraid to lose Neil Brown.
06:47 But it's a very optical thing with the recruits, number one.
06:56 Number two, it gives you a chance to up the salary pool for
07:00 the assistants, which is well overdue.
07:03 And number three, you have to remain competitive.
07:07 You just have to, because even if Neil Brown works out and
07:15 the next two or three years are successful,
07:17 say he really takes this thing to the next level.
07:21 You wanna protect yourself.
07:24 You wanna make sure that buyout's pretty significantly high.
07:28 If another school were to come in and try and hire Neil away, again,
07:34 the closer you get to that 2026 mark, it's not as significant.
07:40 If you rework this, it can be.
07:43 And I think that's why you gotta take advantage of this window that could start
07:48 to happen.
07:49 And if that were to happen, you lose Neil,
07:52 you go through another coaching search.
07:54 You've gotta go to that next set of coaches and say, hey, look,
08:00 this is what we've been paying Neil Brown.
08:02 This is what others in the Big 12 pay their head coaches.
08:05 There's going to be a significant amount of trust and
08:10 belief in Ren Baker, the administration.
08:14 If they've got years to go back on and say, we've been right there.
08:21 We've been right there with some of the best in the Big 12.
08:24 But if you don't have that, it's kind of hard to believe that they're gonna give
08:28 you everything that you need to be successful.
08:30 So I 100% agree with this decision if it is something that's gonna happen.
08:37 I think it needs to happen.
08:40 Again, it doesn't have to be giving Neil 12 million bucks a year.
08:46 It doesn't mean to extend them to 2035.
08:48 It's nothing gonna be crazy.
08:50 I promise you, Ren Baker is a very thoughtful and
08:55 very wise person when it comes to money, when it comes to decisions.
09:00 He's not going to do anything ridiculous that's gonna put him or
09:05 this athletic program in a tight spot.
09:08 If anything, it's gonna help it.
09:10 So let's just take a step back.
09:13 Let's take a deep breath and just see what happens.
09:17 Something may not even happen.
09:18 This is all preliminary stuff, all right?
09:20 So there's nothing official yet.
09:23 But I do expect, I mean, I would assume that if it's gotten this far,
09:29 something's gonna get done, and it should.
09:32 One year where the NIL situation was really good and it resulted in nine wins.
09:40 I don't care if the schedule was tough or not.
09:42 When you looked at the roster, was it a nine win team?
09:46 Still probably not, even with that schedule.
09:48 A lot of young pieces, a lot of guys that were
09:54 playing as true freshmen, redshirt freshmen, this is still a very young football team.
09:58 Which is part of which why I think this is maybe like an eight or
10:03 nine win team again.
10:05 People may freak out about that because it's not big 12 champs or
10:09 anything like that, but this is a team that's still building.
10:14 So we'll see what happens.
10:17 Neil Brown may be getting a new deal just before
10:23 Ren Baker really dips his toes into the men's basketball coaching search,
10:31 which is really about to heat up here within a matter of days, really.
10:35 So that'll do it for us here this morning.
10:39 On Between the Ears, I'm Scott McCown.
10:40 Make sure you hit that subscribe button on YouTube and while you're there,
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10:52 We'll be back here tomorrow with another episode.
10:54 [MUSIC]