The country-folk musician stood in front of West Virginia’s football team and humbly said he was not one for big speeches. He was wrong about that.
Back in the day, before Charles Wesley Godwin picked up a guitar, he’d dreamed of being a walk-on linebacker for the Mountaineers. Coach Neal Brown didn’t bring in many speakers during camp in August, but Godwin felt like a good choice. Brown hoped the fast-rising singer-songwriter, a WVU grad who hails from and resides in Morgantown, could speak on the importance of representing the state.
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Godwin got right to the point in a three-minute address during a break in practice. One month earlier, his beloved West Virginia had been picked to finish in last place — 14th out of 14 — in the Big 12’s preseason media poll. And that fired him up.
He told the tale of how a festival in Kentucky once offended his band by giving them the 2:20 p.m. slot. They wanted to be headliners. For the next year, every time they went on stage, they reminded each other: 2:20. It was all the motivation they needed. Now they’re playing with Zach Bryan and Luke Combs. That’s what this team needed to understand: Disrespect can be a gift.
“They picked y’all 14th! They picked you 14th. They must’ve forgot who you are,” Godwin said. “There shouldn’t be anything else that needs said this year before you step on the field to get your absolute best other than 14.”
Center stage with @CharlesWesleyG 🎶
Thanks for getting the guys going this morning! pic.twitter.com/0MuSYw3jYE
— West Virginia Football (@WVUfootball) August 7, 2023
From that day forward, West Virginia players say, “14” turned into their mantra. If you walk through their locker room, training table or anywhere in their football facility, you’ll see the number in gold on every TV screen. Brown calls it a catalyst for all the good that’s happened since.
West Virginia is 4-1, riding its first four-game win streak of Brown’s tenure and closing in on its first Top 25 ranking since he took over in 2019. Next up on the revenge tour is a trip to Texas for a long-awaited Thursday night battle with Houston and former WVU coach Dana Holgorsen.
Brown has gone from hot seat to hot streak by building the kind of team that resembles his giant-killers at Troy: tough, tight-knit and scrappy as hell. His staff and his players believe they finally got that DNA right in Year 5. This group plays with attitude. They’re out to keep proving everyone wrong.
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Coaches love to lean into the “nobody believes in us” line, searching for and exaggerating any slights to bring a team together. This is a rare instance where it’s real: Nobody believed in West Virginia.
Brown asked the fan base to “Trust the Climb” when he arrived in Morgantown. His record is now 26-26. It has been a tough trek, but he stayed steady and never lost faith. Entering a pivotal season for his future and the program’s trajectory, the head coach knew this much: He was damn sure they weren’t destined for last place.
“There’s been some unfortunate things that have happened here, we’ve lost some close games and we’ve missed some opportunities to get over the hump,” Brown said. “But I just didn’t feel like we were that far away. I just thought this death sentence had been given probably a little too early.”
On a stage in the middle of AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, Brown made the case for a West Virginia turnaround. He began his Big 12 media day appearance in July by calling out the gathered media for that No. 14 ranking.
“Upset about the media poll,” Brown said. “Definitely do not agree with that.”
After watching West Virginia disappoint with a 5-7 finish in 2022, voters had little faith in the Mountaineers and slotted them behind all four of the league’s new teams. Brown cited a strong finish last November, a slew of All-Big 12-caliber returning starters, an experienced offensive line and an improved defense as reasons for a more optimistic outlook. He vowed his team wouldn’t finish last.
How compelling was his pitch? Only three reporters bothered to ask follow-up questions.
Brown had been vacationing at his beach house in Florida when he first got word about the poll. It made official what was already evident: West Virginia was not being taken seriously at all. Anonymous Big 12 coaches told Athlon that Brown might have the worst roster in the conference, one that looked “like a MAC team” compared to the rest of the league. They claimed the Mountaineers were “legitimately bad” on defense and “not physical at all.”
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Those exceedingly harsh assessments did not go unnoticed. But the truth is all the attention focused on Brown’s hot-seat status entering 2023 ended up helping his team fly under the radar.
“The record was what it is. I’m not saying that’s unfair,” Brown said. “I’m not saying the narrative on me was unfair. Like, I get it. But I’m saying, with our football team, that was people not doing their due diligence.”
What he witnessed this offseason did not match up with dead-last expectations. That process began with a deep dive on what the Mountaineers needed to become to be successful in the Big 12. They needed a more disciplined team that wouldn’t beat itself. They needed players willing to strain and consistently give extreme effort. They needed to be tougher physically and mentally. They needed to play much smarter situational football to survive close games. Those four words — discipline, strain, tough, smart — were the themes behind everything they did in the winter, spring and summer.
Brown saw more of an edge in mat drills and winter workouts. They had their best spring yet in terms of practice and preparation. The head coach saw sincere buy-in and dedication. That’s what made him believe. The Mountaineers were outmatched against a top-10 Penn State team in a 38-15 road loss to open the season, but that didn’t shake Brown’s confidence.
After a 56-17 rout of FCS Duquesne came a three-game stretch against Pitt, Texas Tech and TCU that would reveal who they really were. On his fifth play in the Backyard Brawl, quarterback Garrett Greene went down with an ankle injury. They leaned on a 100-yard game from running back CJ Donaldson Jr. and a defense that grabbed three interceptions to power a gritty 17-6 win over their rival. The defense delivered another exceptional effort on a rainy night against Texas Tech, getting a red zone stop at the end of a bend-don’t-break 15-play drive to secure a 20-13 win. Brown had never beat Tech and badly wanted that one after a 38-point drubbing in Lubbock last year.
The TCU game, a physically and emotionally draining fight in Fort Worth, left the head coach feeling prouder than ever. Greene wasn’t going to play so he could get his ankle back to 100 percent. The plan changed Thursday after backup quarterback Nicco Marchiol got injured in practice. “Coach asked me if I could go, and I said yep,” Greene said. The staff had to redo the game plan, and Greene hoped his ankle would hold up. He threw for 142 yards, ran for 80 and two scores and gave his guys a chance. The defense lost starters Aubrey Burks and Trey Lathan to injuries that sent them to the hospital. In the end, they found a way. West Virginia’s special teams blocked two field goal tries in the fourth quarter and delivered a 24-21 win.
“It’s not always been pretty football,” Brown said, “but we’re finding ways to win.”
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Greene thinks back to last October. They had a seventh-ranked TCU team that would play for a national title on the ropes in the final minutes in Morgantown. They let that one get away. They’ve let a lot of winnable games get away in recent years. Not this time.
“In the wild, the scariest animal is a cornered animal,” Greene said. “This whole year, we haven’t had anywhere to go. Everybody counted us out. And we embrace that.”
After the win, Brown declared nobody plays harder than the Mountaineers. He said they belong in the Top 25. And he couldn’t resist poking the doubters.
“I don’t want to hear anybody that’s on social media (saying), ‘Oh, yeah, I saw them being 4-1,’” he said.
West Virginia is finally contending in the Big 12 because it got the right people in the building. Getting here was not a smooth process.
“I think anytime you’re at a job you learn as you go, right?” Brown said. “We made some mistakes on who we brought in probably early. More importantly, we made some mistakes with who we didn’t get off the bus.”
Brown took on a rebuild in January 2019. West Virginia had just come up one win short of the Big 12 title game with a veteran team led by Will Grier and five more NFL players. Holgorsen bolted for Houston. The new staff inherited a team that lost 284 career starts from its lineup. Only three returning players had started 20-plus games. And they accepted the job after the early signing period.
The rules that Deion Sanders and other first-year coaches have taken advantage of to instantly flip rosters weren’t in place in 2019. Signing limits made it tougher to reload. The recruiting shutdown during the pandemic made it tougher to evaluate talent. Learning the right way to recruit to West Virginia took some time.
More than 60 scholarship players have transferred out of the program over the last three portal cycles. One-third of them landed at other Power 5 schools. Some of the more startling departures like Akheem Mesidor (Miami) and Tykee Smith (Georgia) did hurt, but many of those outgoing transfers weren’t the right fit.
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“We’ve done a better job in the selection piece of bringing in guys that culturally match who we need to be here to be successful,” Brown said, “and we’ve also kinda rid ourselves of the guys that don’t match.”
Easier said than done. When you combine the misses and attrition with underwhelming on-field results, fans begin to lose faith. West Virginia has fielded strong defenses under Brown but hasn’t gotten things right on offense. Since 2019, no Big 12 team has scored 20 points or less more times. The Mountaineers are 4-19 in those games. They’re 3-13 against AP Top 25 opponents. Entering 2022, it was clear Brown needed proof he was getting it turned around.
The seat got plenty hot after three consecutive Big 12 losses dropped the underachieving Mountaineers to 3-6 in early November. Brown had hoped transfer quarterback JT Daniels might be the missing piece. He’d made the wrong call on his offensive coordinator hire with Graham Harrell. The defense took a step back. But it was athletic director Shane Lyons who would take the fall. Following his Nov. 14 firing, Lyons told MetroNews that president E. Gordon Gee made him the scapegoat for West Virginia’s disappointing football season and for giving Brown a contract extension at the end of 2020.
That extension, offered after an encouraging 6-4 finish to Year 2, was intended to raise the buyout price if Brown became a hot coaching candidate and left for another job but also made it extremely expensive to fire him. Brown is owed 100 percent of his remaining salary if he’s fired before the end of 2024. The price of cutting ties at the end of 2022 would’ve been nearly $17 million.
“I think he checks every box that we’re looking for as a head coach,” Lyons told MetroNews. “Unfortunately, the big box he needs to check is to win more football games. I believe that’s coming in the future.”
On the same day new AD Wren Baker was hired away from North Texas, West Virginia announced Brown would return for 2023. “I like Wren a lot,” Brown said. “I think he’s a great fit here.” They’ve gotten along well in their first year together, and Baker has taken an aggressive approach to embracing name, image and likeness with their Country Roads Trust collective.
Though West Virginia finished 5-7, there were signs of progress in November. The offense changed. Brown concluded they needed a dual-threat QB to win in the Big 12 and turned to Greene. He stepped in and led an upset win over Oklahoma, a first for the program since joining the conference, and a road win at Oklahoma State. That team wasn’t going to a bowl but wasn’t going to give up. Neither would their coach.
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“When things don’t go the way you want them to be and people start talking about hot seat and all that kind of stuff,” Brown said, “I think it’s a real healthy exercise to say, ‘OK, what’s the best-case scenario here? What’s the worst-case scenario?’
“The worst-case scenario is you get fired. OK, that sounds really bad and the publicity of it is really negative. But you kinda go through this where you go through it mentally and you’re like, OK, well, if that’s the worst case, at the time I was 42 years old, I’m 43 now. I’ve got plenty of time. I’m gonna recover pretty well off this, you know?
“So you go through that and you say, ‘OK, well, what’s the best thing that can happen?’ Well, the best thing that can happen is we turn this around and kinda give the bird as we get better.”
That little mental exercise helped Brown find clarity amid chaos. All he could do, he decided, was do the job the way he knows how to do it. Do it with the coaches and players he wants to be around. Focus on the work, tune out everything else and help his people do the same.
“The thing I really worked on, and I hope I accomplished this — I’m not saying it’s perfect — but I don’t want my family to feel the pressure, I don’t want my players to feel the pressure and I don’t want our staff to feel the pressure,” Brown said. “I want our players to come in and be excited about playing. I want our staff to worry about doing the best they can with this team and not worrying about if they’re gonna have a job. So that’s been my goal, to shield them from that stuff. I’ve got to set a standard for how you deal with that, and I just refuse to let it get me in a bad spot.”
Ten months later, West Virginia just might be in a good spot.
Greene knew he wanted to play for Brown since he was 15 years old.
Troy was the first school to extend a scholarship offer back in his sophomore year. This coaching staff believed in him before anyone else and didn’t care that he was undersized. When Brown got to Morgantown, the quarterback was one of the first recruits he called. Greene was the second player on board for their initial 2020 class.
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“I wouldn’t want to be the quarterback for any other guy,” Greene said.
It’s guys like Greene, players who had to ride out all the ups and downs and stuck around, who are powering the Mountaineers’ sudden resurgence.
They’ve developed an excellent offensive line that has combined for 158 career starts, led by a trio of All-Big 12 caliber big fellas in Zach Frazier, Wyatt Milum and Doug Nester, that Greene calls the heart and soul of the offense. “They love moving men against their will,” he said. They have a budding star at running back in Donaldson. Brown, who’s back in charge of play calling this year, insists they’re about to take off on offense now that Greene is healthy.
“That kid’s a winner,” Brown said. “He can run, he can make all the throws, has great arm talent, he’s got leadership skills and he’s got kind of the moxie that you want at that position.”
Their fast, physical defense ranks No. 1 in the Big 12 in yards per play and third down defense. They’re leaning on several proven veterans in Burks, defensive end Sean Martin and linebacker Lee Kpogba. There are 25 players on the roster who arrived via the transfer portal and several newcomers who’ve impressed, including cornerback Beanie Bishop Jr., safety Anthony Wilson and defensive lineman Tomiwa Durojaiye.
Kpogba, a former junior college transfer, senses a difference in this team’s work ethic. He no longer hears complaining at the end of tough workouts. He’s seeing more guys in the building putting in extra work and encouraging one another. They’re a hungry group. And they take the hot seat talk personally.
“They’re not just talking about him. They’re talking about all of us as a football team,” Kpogba said. “Coach Brown doesn’t play a snap out there.”
The Houston game is a little bit personal for both sides. Brown doesn’t dismiss that it’s an important one in the eyes of West Virginians. If they win this one, it’ll be tough to keep the Mountaineers out of the Top 25. The schedule sets up nicely with Oklahoma State, UCF and BYU up next before a road game at Oklahoma on Nov. 11. Texas, Kansas and Kansas State aren’t on the schedule.
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All eyes are on the Sooners and Longhorns in this league race. Could West Virginia become the sleeper challenger?
The better question in Brown’s opinion: Can they handle winning? The staff has competed for Sun Belt titles before. These players haven’t gone on the kind of run that put them in the race. In the Big 12, it’ll be close battles and survive-and-advance mode week after week.
“It’s not like I’m sitting here going, ‘Oh man, we’ve really arrived,’” Brown said. “The thing about us is we can beat anybody but anybody can beat us. I’m keenly aware of that.”
They’ve strung together some good quarters and halves but haven’t played a complete ballgame yet. Their best football, as Brown put it, is out in front of them. The ball hasn’t exactly bounced their way in past seasons. It’s starting to now.
As they try to keep the four-game win streak rolling, Greene says he couldn’t care less about the predictably belated love heading the Mountaineers’ way. “Outsiders are more quote-unquote bought into our program now,” he said, “but the guys in the locker room haven’t changed.” They’re not giving away their edge that easily. They haven’t forgotten what Godwin told them on the practice field back in August.
The wise musician compared the 14th-place prediction to a Christmas present. He urged them to pull it out and open it up before every game. Five games in, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
“No matter how many games we win,” Kpogba said, “we’ll still have 14 in our head.”
(Top photo of Garrett Greene: Christopher Leduc / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)