FILE - West Virginia head coach Neal Brown gets holds the trophy after their win against North Carolina in an NCAA college football game at the Duke's Mayo Bowl Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

MORGANTOWN — The Neal Brown era as the 35th football coach at West Virginia University has ended as WVU athletic director Wren Baker announced late Sunday afternoon that he was making a coaching change.

It was not unexpected.

It was also not unwarranted.

It turned out, after six seasons, that he was the right man for the wrong job.

When he was hired by then-athletic director Shane Lyons, it was a heralded move. Dana Holgorsen had outlived his welcome in Morgantown and left behind the ashes of what once had been a respected program capable of challenging for conference and even national championships.

Brown was brought in to right the cultural and football mess Holgorsen left behind.

He rebuilt the culture from the ground up but could not deliver on the slogan he had brought with him.

“Trust the climb,” he said, and the fans followed, but he never could reach the mountain top.

The final straw in a WVU career that saw him win 37 games and lose 35 and go 25-28 in Big 12 play came on Saturday when the team was embarrassed, 52-15, at Texas Tech.

Add that to the last home game when WVU drew just 40,000 fans to Milan Puskar Stadium and it was over.

Fan apathy coming at a time when the bank balance matters as much as the standings forced the hand, although Baker clearly had his mind made up prior to the Texas Tech debacle.

“Coach Brown is a great person, and he has served as a tremendous ambassador for West Virginia University,” Baker said in announcing the decision to relieve Brown of his duties. “He led our storied program with class and integrity and always put in the hard work necessary to allow for success. We are grateful to Neal, his wife, Brooke, and their children for their contributions to our University, community and state, and we wish them the very best in their next endeavor.”

But he could not translate his ability to develop young men with class into winning football players.

This was thought to be Brown’s year. He had an experienced team with some exciting talent on it coming out of his best seasons, a 9-4 record in 2023.

Expectations soared.

But the nation’s No. 4 team Penn State and the Backyard Brawl rivals from Pittsburgh would take pleasure in puncturing the balloon in which those expectations soared and the team zigzagged its way through the season, beating lower-level teams and failing to win against teams that could turn it into a successful year.

Fans jumped ship and donors were in Baker’s ear. Brown had to finish strong to have any chance to stay but that dreadful 29-0 second quarter in Lubbock was the blindfold presented to the condemned man before the execution.

The shame was that Brown’s tenure was doomed from the start. Holgorsen had left a mess behind and his first team won only three games.

He rolled up his sleeves and went to work to fix it, but the following season America shut down as COVID-19 created far more difficult problems than how to win football games.

Only once that passed did Brown get started on his rebuild, but this wasn’t Troy, from where he came after going 35-16 at that level.

He was swimming with the sharks, the glare of the national spotlight on him and his program and his games being aired nationally.

The magic never developed. There were no aces up his sleeve.

Baker showed patience with him. He even worked out a contract extension with him at a time when many felt that was not warranted, but Brown’s buyout was far too expensive to pay him off at the time.

Now, they have to start over again.

“We will keep our focus on the incredible young men in our program and preparing for our bowl game,” Baker added. “Our national search for WVU’s 36th head football coach is already underway. I am confident that with the strong alignment among the University leadership, our passionate supporters, our proud history and our willingness to invest, we will have an outstanding pool of candidates.”

We are in a new era of collegiate sports, though. Brown’s players have the right to leave via the transfer portal and it can be expected that many will move on.

The knee-jerk reaction always is to seek replacements with ties to West Virginia, which brings us around to the name Rich Rodriguez, who coached WVU through its last era of national prominence before suffering a devastating defeat in the Backyard Brawl as a 28-point favorite and on the doorstep of a National Championship meeting with Ohio State.

Forty-eight hours later Rodriguez had left for Michigan, never again to reach such heights and being Public Enemy No. 1 with the fan base.

Many now are making social media noise like they are willing to forgive and forget as Rodriguez has success at Jacksonville State in Alabama, but Baker is going to have to wrestle with whether that would be the wisest move while understanding that many alumni want no part of Rodriguez’s return.

Names such as Jimbo Fisher and Curt Cignetti are bandied about, but Baker’s modus operandi since signing on has been to seek his own hire and has had success with the likes of Darian DeVries and Mark Kellogg, taking them from a lower level, ignoring that they had no West Virginia ties, but knowing they presented what he was looking for in a coach.

He has moved rapidly in his searches, so it would not be surprising to see him do so in this case, too. WVU remains an attractive destination for coaches and the upside to success is alluring to any coach.