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West Virginia HC Neal Brown on tough start: "Did they have a good time?" · The Craig Way Show

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  Speaker 1: We get into our number three today, we've already had
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  earlier in the show, you heard from Jerry Jones, the
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  Cowboys owner and GM getting a little bit irritated at
• 0:13
  his local radio show. And it is at this time
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  of year, would you not agree, Cameron, that we see
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  not only coach dismissals like what happened with Robert Salabing,
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  you know, sent packing by the New York Jets and
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  then they ended up losing their debut without him last night.
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  But this is where the criticism heightens of head coaches
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  of teams, no matter what level of football we're talking about,
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  Pro football, college football, high school football, doesn't matter. This
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  is where if you get to mid season and the
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  team is not performing to certainly the coach and player expectation,
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  but usually it's the fan expectation that heightens all this,
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  so things get a little bit exacerbated.
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  Speaker 2: You're about a third of the way through the NFL season,
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  close to about halfway through the college football season. You
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  have a large enough sample size to know either if
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  your team's a contender or not a contender. You can
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  kind of weed out who's good and who's not. And
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  a lot of those fan bases can are Smarten the
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  figure out maybe this coach is not the right coach.
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  We saw it with the Jets and Robert Sala. I
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  think we're gonna see it with the Jaguars and Doug Peterson.
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  I wonder if Jacksonville's gonna leave him in London after
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  their next London home game. And of course you wonder
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  what's gonna happen with Cleveland and Stefanski and the Shaun
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  Watson of course to Marii Cooper news him being traded out.
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  And then you have the Dallas Cowboys who have a
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  bye week this week. Usually, if you're gonna fire a
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  coach in the middle of the season, you tend to
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  do it during a bye week so you can get
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  someone else in there and give you yourself about two
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  weeks to kind of get the new game plan and
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  the new staff and and all that. But Jerry Jones
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  is Jerry Jones, very hard headed. But Craig, I mean,
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  we talked about it yesterday that the next five games
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  for the Cowboys is a very brutal, brutal schedule San Francisco, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington.
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  If you lose those five games, I wonder if we're
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  gonna see what happened to Wade Phillips and was a
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  nine to eight when he got fired.
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  Speaker 1: After that one in twenty ten? Wasn't it twenty ten
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  when they started one in seven?
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  Speaker 2: One in seven? I mean, there's a chance Dallas is
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  three and eight. Yeah, but at that point, at three
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  and eight, you are already out of the playoffs. So
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  by then it'll be too little, too late. But it
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  was too little too late when Week one started for
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  the Cowboys.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so you realize that what you just described, and
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  you did it in really good detail, was uncomfortable positions
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  for coaches and teams just in the NFL. What you
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  just described as the NFL. What we know to be
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  true is this happens everywhere college high school football. Even
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  trust me, I'm around the high school game enough with
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  the Friday Night Show and the other things that I do.
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  When fans start grumbling about a high school team that
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  they think should be performing at a higher level, heaven forbid,
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  But that does happen. Then, Like I said, there's the
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  college level, there's grumbling. There's grumbling into Oklahoma this week.
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  There there's grumbling in other sec parts. There's grumbling in Columbus,
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  Ohio this week, there's go there's grumbling in southern California.
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  So there's grumbling that goes on, and then there's a
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  different kind of grumbling that's going on at West Virginia.
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  Have you heard about this? This is a This is
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  a pretty interesting story West Virginia because they had the
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  big rush toward the end of the year and did
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  really well down the stretch, uh and and made it
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  to a bowl game. Supposedly, quote unquote, Neil Brown, the
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  head coach, was to use that term off the hot seat.
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  A lot of excitement about the Mountaineers going into this year,
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  but they're three and three now, and that was after
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  Saturday night's home loss to Iowa State. Now it doesn't
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  matter that Iowa State is number nine in the country
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  and undefeated. It's home loss actually televised gay So folks
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  are getting kind of antsy and grumbling. And then it
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  got exacerbated because I've heard coaches try to placate the
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  fan base, calm down the fan base, reassure the fan
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  base with stuff, but comments like these probably don't help.
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  Now I'm going to read you these comments from Neil Brown,
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  and I want you to tell me how well they
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  would go over in Austin, Texas, or College Station Texas,
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  or Norman, Oklahoma, or several other places like that. Okay,
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  he was talking about somebody asked him if he had
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  a message for fans who are upset with their performance
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  this year. Here's his quote. I get that they want
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  to win, But what I would say is did they
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  have a good time? Did they enjoy it? It was
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  a pretty good atmosphere, you know. I'm assuming they probably
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  had a good time tailgating. So if they're in the
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  deal for enjoyment, then I would come back. I looked
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  at the weather, it's gonna be nice again. It's a
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  night game, and we need them to provide a home
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  field advantage. How do you think that would go over
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  in Austin, Texas? If the team were struggling in Sart
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  and said, hey, do you have a good time of
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  the game. Do you have a good time tailgating? Hey,
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  weather's good? Come on back, how do you think that
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  would go over here? Or College Station or Norman, Oklahoma,
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  or you know lots of places like that, Columbus, Ohio,
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  all those places I just mentioned.
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  Speaker 2: The message boards would burn down.
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  Speaker 1: Well, that's pretty much.
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  Speaker 2: What's happened that the servers could not withstand the pout
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  of turmoil to the message boards would cost it. I mean,
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  Neil Brown read the room, buddy. I mean last season
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  he went in on the hot seat already in West Virginia,
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  had a fantastic twenty twenty three, and so a lot
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  of hopes coming into this season. And they lost to
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  an Iowa State team that might be the best group
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  of five teams. They lost to a Penn State team
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  that's currently ranked number four, and lost to a pit
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  team that's not too bad. So they're not an awful team.
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  But as a power for head coach, you're asking, did
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  you have a good time dining camping? Didn't go camping?
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  You played a college football game?
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  Speaker 1: Neil Brown, so fans responded angrily, He actually said this.
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  He actually said this after the game. Okay, So then
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  at his news conference he got asked about it. Did
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  you mean to say and and so on and so
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  for and so then the reporter who asked a question
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  Monday to post on social media that he honestly didn't
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  plan to stir anything up. I thought it was a
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  simple question. And so he also said, hey, we have
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  a tough schedule, and the three teams that have beaten
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  West Virginia the season are all undefeated, and I think
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  those are what Pitt, Penn State and Iowa State good teams, right,
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  he said quote That's not an excuse, it's just the truth.
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  The games in our league are going to come down
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  to the fourth quarter, and I don't think this one
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  on Saturday is going to be any different. So we
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  need the fans to help us. I do get their frustration,
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  but I don't think when you watch our product, I
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  don't think the product is something that they should be
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  other than the outcome. It was an entertaining football game.
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  If you're a football fan and just watching that, it's
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  pretty entertaining. We just didn't play well enough to win.
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  So I would hope with that in mind, they would
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  come back for another entertaining game that hopefully we can
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  play better at the end and win. Good football. I
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  know we didn't win, but good football.
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  Speaker 2: Imagine Defendable said that on Saturday.
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  Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying, so.
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  Speaker 2: Olthough, I think that I think your fans had fun
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  of the State Fair.
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  Speaker 1: Did you get did you guys get a corn dog,
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  corn Dog, You did you? Did you ride the Texas Star?
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  Did you have a good time?
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  Speaker 2: And there's some statements that will travel with the coach
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  for the rest of their life. You know, good things,
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  bad things.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: I always think about Tom Herman and winning his hard
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  You as any Texas fan there, you got what's the
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  most famous thing Tom Herman said? Winning his heart? That
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  and okay cool hook him? The two things in for
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  Tom Herman. He's probably he's a great, fantastic he's a
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  great football mind, but he's always going to have that
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  attached to him. Now, Neil Brown, did you have fun?
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  Did you always be associated with Neil Well?
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  Speaker 1: And and and if we're being real here, Herman's okay
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  cool hook him. A lot of fans like that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so positive, Yeah, positive that.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, swinning is hard. Yeah, that didn't go over too well.
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  It was that all right? Anyway, coming up, we're gonna
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  hear from Quinn rs Long, Orange quarterback coming off of
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  the win on Saturday, where Quinn was being if we're
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  being honest, said I didn't play my best, but my
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  teammates picked me up. I hope I turned that back around.
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  So that's coming up when we continue here on this
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  Tuesday afternoon on sports Radio AM thirteen under the zone
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  of the iHeartRadio app.