Photo by: Kaitlyn Cole
Brown Gets His Opportunity at WVU Just Like Nehlen Did in 1979
January 07, 2019 01:00 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - It's probably fitting that Don Nehlen was among the first people to greet Neal Brown at Milan Puskar Stadium yesterday evening.
There are some similarities between the recent hiring of Brown and Nehlen's WVU employment some 40 years ago in 1979.
Brown and Nehlen are not Mountain State natives; both are one state removed from West Virginia – Brown from Danville, Kentucky, and Nehlen from nearby Canton, Ohio.
Like Brown, Nehlen was once a college head coach before taking the WVU job. Nehlen spent nine seasons leading Bowling Green's program where he earned the nickname "Master of the Upset" after posting shocking victories over Purdue, Syracuse and Brigham Young during his tenure with the Falcons.
Brown, too, earned a similar reputation during his four seasons at Troy with stunning upset wins over Nebraska and LSU.
Nehlen's hiring came about when West Virginia athletic director Dick Martin was tipped off by friend Bob Marcum, at the time Kansas's athletic director. The more Martin researched Nehlen, the more he was enamored with him and the more quickly he steered the search process in Nehlen's direction.
In order to do so, Martin felt he had to go underground by keeping things close to the vest and only involving his most immediate surrogates.
That's very similar to the way WVU Director of Athletics Shane Lyons went about hiring Brown. Lyons had a three-ring binder full of information on Brown after researching him extensively, and kept what he had acquired within his senior leadership team.
"At that time, to protect the overall process and to make sure it worked right, you had to be a little more secretive," the late Martin recalled in 2006. "Not that I was trying to hide anything, but you can overblow something and people can get into different camps."
Martin had put together such an impressive dossier of information on his top head coaching target that he even caught Nehlen off guard with what he knew about him. After Nehlen left Bowling Green in 1976 following a dispute with his president over budgetary reductions, he spent three seasons on Bo Schembechler's Michigan staff as quarterback coach.
Then, when Martin finally called Schembechler to talk about Nehlen he had all of his ducks in a row.
"When the West Virginia job opened, I never wrote a letter or made a phone call," Nehlen once recalled. "I was in Louisville, Kentucky, recruiting (offensive tackle) Bubba Paris and I come in and Bo calls me down to his office. He said, 'Hey boy, are you interested in the West Virginia job?' I said I wasn't. He said, 'Hey Don, don't give me that stuff. This guy Martin called and I've known you since you were 17 and this guy knows more about you than I do.'"
Nehlen checked all of the boxes Martin was looking for in a head football coach to lead the Mountaineer program.
"You needed someone that could relate to West Virginia and West Virginians," Martin recalled. "I think you needed someone that was honest. The thing that came across to me most about Don was his sincerity and honesty, and I thought he could really relate to the players."
Hit the fast-forward button 40 years and one of the things that strikes you immediately about Neal Brown is his sincerity. On the very day Brown was named West Virginia University's 35th football coach, he made it a point to attend Troy's men's basketball game that afternoon against Appalachian State to address the Trojan fans at halftime.
He took the microphone, stood at mid-court, and poured out his heart to them.
"From my family and I," he concluded, "I thank you so much. God bless and Go Troy!"
Brown has already earned nationwide praise for taking the time to tie up all of those remaining loose ends before accepting the next big challenge in his life.
That's a rarity in many coaches these days. It's a trait you'd more likely find in coaches from Nehlen's era, from someone like Don Nehlen.
Without question, Nehlen's best coaching attribute was his positive demeanor. He always wanted positive coaches around him, and he wanted his players to believe they could do more than they were capable of doing.
That's how the Mountaineers upset Florida in the 1981 Peach Bowl. That's how West Virginia beat ninth-ranked Oklahoma in 1982, and that's how WVU beat Pitt in 1983 after seven straight losses to the Panthers.
That's also how West Virginia's 29-year losing streak to Penn State finally ended.
All-America offensive tackle Brian Jozwiak once described the spell Nehlen put on his players during a meeting the night before the game at the team hotel. The guys had just finished their movie and were collecting their pillows to return to their rooms when Nehlen walked up to the front of the room where a small podium was positioned off to the side.
He flicked on the podium light, which was barely bright enough to show his face, and then he began mapping out how West Virginia was going to finally beat the Nittany Lions after years and years of frustration and losing.
He talked about how they were going to strain to make every block, how defenders were going to fight off blockers and make tackles and how they were going to keep the game close before winning it at the end.
That's when they were going to run 56 off the right side and Kevin White was going to toss that football to Pat Randolph. Scottie Barrows was going to turn the corner and wipe out that Penn State safety and Pat was going to follow Scottie right into the end zone.
Then, Paul Woodside was going to seal the deal with a field goal!
"He called the entire game," an amazed Jozwiak recalled years later. "Nehlen's brilliance as a coach in orchestrating all of this was because everything he ever did, said or gave to the players was pre-calculated and pre-planned stuff. It wasn't on a whim. His coaches prepared us and got their information and put it all together and we bought it like a big bass.
"There was no question we were going to win that ballgame," Jozwiak added.
That sounds an awful lot like Brown, a renowned note taker and meticulous planner. Brown did something similar before this year's Nebraska game when he asked Troy's chaplain to get up in front of the team to give them some words of inspiration.
The chaplain asked them if those Nebraska giants they were going to face the next day were too big to kill, or too big to miss?
Obviously, Brown got them believing they were too big to miss.
Coaching is not just about possessing knowledge or strategy or assembling a roster full of good football players. It's also about inspiring your guys to do things that they didn't believe they were capable of doing.
That is what Hall of Fame coach Don Nehlen did at West Virginia.
Now, Neal Brown gets his big opportunity to do that as well.
There are some similarities between the recent hiring of Brown and Nehlen's WVU employment some 40 years ago in 1979.
Brown and Nehlen are not Mountain State natives; both are one state removed from West Virginia – Brown from Danville, Kentucky, and Nehlen from nearby Canton, Ohio.
Like Brown, Nehlen was once a college head coach before taking the WVU job. Nehlen spent nine seasons leading Bowling Green's program where he earned the nickname "Master of the Upset" after posting shocking victories over Purdue, Syracuse and Brigham Young during his tenure with the Falcons.
Brown, too, earned a similar reputation during his four seasons at Troy with stunning upset wins over Nebraska and LSU.
Nehlen's hiring came about when West Virginia athletic director Dick Martin was tipped off by friend Bob Marcum, at the time Kansas's athletic director. The more Martin researched Nehlen, the more he was enamored with him and the more quickly he steered the search process in Nehlen's direction.
In order to do so, Martin felt he had to go underground by keeping things close to the vest and only involving his most immediate surrogates.
That's very similar to the way WVU Director of Athletics Shane Lyons went about hiring Brown. Lyons had a three-ring binder full of information on Brown after researching him extensively, and kept what he had acquired within his senior leadership team.
"At that time, to protect the overall process and to make sure it worked right, you had to be a little more secretive," the late Martin recalled in 2006. "Not that I was trying to hide anything, but you can overblow something and people can get into different camps."
Martin had put together such an impressive dossier of information on his top head coaching target that he even caught Nehlen off guard with what he knew about him. After Nehlen left Bowling Green in 1976 following a dispute with his president over budgetary reductions, he spent three seasons on Bo Schembechler's Michigan staff as quarterback coach.
Then, when Martin finally called Schembechler to talk about Nehlen he had all of his ducks in a row.
"When the West Virginia job opened, I never wrote a letter or made a phone call," Nehlen once recalled. "I was in Louisville, Kentucky, recruiting (offensive tackle) Bubba Paris and I come in and Bo calls me down to his office. He said, 'Hey boy, are you interested in the West Virginia job?' I said I wasn't. He said, 'Hey Don, don't give me that stuff. This guy Martin called and I've known you since you were 17 and this guy knows more about you than I do.'"
Nehlen checked all of the boxes Martin was looking for in a head football coach to lead the Mountaineer program.
"You needed someone that could relate to West Virginia and West Virginians," Martin recalled. "I think you needed someone that was honest. The thing that came across to me most about Don was his sincerity and honesty, and I thought he could really relate to the players."
Hit the fast-forward button 40 years and one of the things that strikes you immediately about Neal Brown is his sincerity. On the very day Brown was named West Virginia University's 35th football coach, he made it a point to attend Troy's men's basketball game that afternoon against Appalachian State to address the Trojan fans at halftime.
He took the microphone, stood at mid-court, and poured out his heart to them.
"From my family and I," he concluded, "I thank you so much. God bless and Go Troy!"
Brown has already earned nationwide praise for taking the time to tie up all of those remaining loose ends before accepting the next big challenge in his life.
That's a rarity in many coaches these days. It's a trait you'd more likely find in coaches from Nehlen's era, from someone like Don Nehlen.
Without question, Nehlen's best coaching attribute was his positive demeanor. He always wanted positive coaches around him, and he wanted his players to believe they could do more than they were capable of doing.
That's how the Mountaineers upset Florida in the 1981 Peach Bowl. That's how West Virginia beat ninth-ranked Oklahoma in 1982, and that's how WVU beat Pitt in 1983 after seven straight losses to the Panthers.
That's also how West Virginia's 29-year losing streak to Penn State finally ended.
All-America offensive tackle Brian Jozwiak once described the spell Nehlen put on his players during a meeting the night before the game at the team hotel. The guys had just finished their movie and were collecting their pillows to return to their rooms when Nehlen walked up to the front of the room where a small podium was positioned off to the side.
He flicked on the podium light, which was barely bright enough to show his face, and then he began mapping out how West Virginia was going to finally beat the Nittany Lions after years and years of frustration and losing.
He talked about how they were going to strain to make every block, how defenders were going to fight off blockers and make tackles and how they were going to keep the game close before winning it at the end.
That's when they were going to run 56 off the right side and Kevin White was going to toss that football to Pat Randolph. Scottie Barrows was going to turn the corner and wipe out that Penn State safety and Pat was going to follow Scottie right into the end zone.
Then, Paul Woodside was going to seal the deal with a field goal!
"He called the entire game," an amazed Jozwiak recalled years later. "Nehlen's brilliance as a coach in orchestrating all of this was because everything he ever did, said or gave to the players was pre-calculated and pre-planned stuff. It wasn't on a whim. His coaches prepared us and got their information and put it all together and we bought it like a big bass.
"There was no question we were going to win that ballgame," Jozwiak added.
That sounds an awful lot like Brown, a renowned note taker and meticulous planner. Brown did something similar before this year's Nebraska game when he asked Troy's chaplain to get up in front of the team to give them some words of inspiration.
The chaplain asked them if those Nebraska giants they were going to face the next day were too big to kill, or too big to miss?
Obviously, Brown got them believing they were too big to miss.
Coaching is not just about possessing knowledge or strategy or assembling a roster full of good football players. It's also about inspiring your guys to do things that they didn't believe they were capable of doing.
That is what Hall of Fame coach Don Nehlen did at West Virginia.
Now, Neal Brown gets his big opportunity to do that as well.
An emotional @NealBrown_WVU addressed Trojan Nation at halftime of today's men's basketball game ...
— Troy Trojans Football ??x?? (@TroyTrojansFB) January 5, 2019
"From my family and I, I thank you, thank you so much, God bless and Go Troy."#OneTROY pic.twitter.com/v0yAgrzDun
The new ball coach meets the old ball coach. Thanks for coming by Coach Nehlen! ?? pic.twitter.com/ck7MJ6uhcZ
— West Virginia Football (@WVUfootball) January 6, 2019
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