Wren Baker reveals timeline for West Virginia to hire new coach

The West Virginia Mountaineers made the decision to move on from Neal Brown following the 2024 season. With that, athletic director Wren Baker is going to be charged with quickly finding the program’s next head coach.

This comes at a time of year when teams are incredibly busy, juggling the Transfer Portal, National Signing Day, and bowl preparation. So, the timeline for making a hire is important, and getting a coach in place to handle all of that in transition is important. Baker knows that, as he explained when breaking down his timeline for a new hire.

“It was a big concern of mine going into this,” Wren Baker said. “We had signing day on Wednesday. The portal opens, I believe on the ninth. We’ve got a bowl game. We’re hoping we can play in an earlier bowl game because I think our kids are pretty excited to stay together and play in a bowl game, but if it’s a late game, the portal becomes a bigger factor. It’s open for 20 days or so. Now, once you’re in, you’re in but if you can play before that thing closes, you have a chance to have better participation at the bowl game. That’s all a factor, but you get to a place where you realize I can’t control any of those factors, and what’s important here is that I put us in the best window we can to make a decision.”

Neal Brown finished his tenure going 37-35 over the course of six seasons. That included leading the Mountaineers to four bowl games, though the program struggled to take a step forward and be competitive in the Big 12 during his time there.

Now, with West Virginia in the process of making a new hire, Wren Baker is putting the emphasis on a good process leading to good results.

“The other jobs that opened, I knew if you would have asked me a month ago, and said, ‘What are all the jobs that could open?’ All of them except for maybe UCF, I knew could open. But again, I think I said this in the basketball search, I have a job to do to make sure all the puzzle pieces are on the table for whoever we hire and then that we hire the best person to assemble those puzzle pieces. That universe of candidates is not one of one,” Baker said.

“So, somebody else’s timeline, their process, what they’re doing, is not gonna affect — I’m very comfortable that we have a good process. I can’t guarantee the outcome of every process, like I told President [E. Gordon] Gee. He said, ‘We’ve been really pleased with your hires here so far.’ I said, ‘Well, if I could guarantee they were all gonna be a success, you couldn’t afford me. I’d be charging $500,000 grand a pop to go work a week. I’d have more business than I can handle.’ So, they’re all their own journey but I think we have developed a process that I feel really good about where it leads us to. So, we’re gonna stick with our process.”

Wren Baker on hiring a coach in the modern landscape

The reality in the modern landscape of college sports, as they deal with changes like NIL and the House Settlement, is they need a skillset that goes beyond scheme. With that, Wren Baker wants to make sure he’s deliberate in his hiring process at West Virginia.

“I always use the old, I think it was a John Wooden quote originally. Maybe it was in Hoosiers later, but be quick but don’t hurry. I understand that the quicker we can get this search done, the better position we put the new staff in. However, you can’t misfire and get it wrong because you were rushing. We’re going to take the time that it takes. That’s what we did with men’s basketball. We got that one done very effectively. A week or so, but I would also say that one is less complex than this one,” Baker said.

“The reality is that you want to retain as much talent as you can. We’ve got some great players. We got some great human beings in the locker room that I would love to stay here. We have people from the area that want to be here, but you look at men’s basketball, they’ve done a good job assembling their roster, and it only has one player that was here last year. So, that Transfer Portal works both ways. Then they get another chance in the Spring/Summertime after Spring ball. That’s probably the way I look at that. I understand that the quicker we can go, the better position we’ll be in but I just refuse to feel rushed to do it.”

These changes in college sports has, in large numbers, had a generation of coaches move on. That means finding a head coach who is prepared to deal with the challenges in the sport.

“It is a fascinating and complicated time in college athletics. There’s a reason why Jay Wright, Tony Bennett, Mike Krzyzewski, even Bob Stoops. As this has changed, it’s different. Coach [Nick] Saban and I talked about it. I don’t think he was ready to be done coaching, but he wasn’t ready to face everything that was going to change in the new world. So, I think those do complicate the search. From my perspective, you can’t just get somebody that only knows schematics and football anymore,” Baker said.

“Like understanding capology is important. That’s a big part of this job. Having a plan for how you’re gonna staff those talent evaluators, for how you’re gonna staff the economic folks that are helping you make decisions on how much to spend on a position group or a player in that position group because all of those numbers are connected. That’s not something that I’m an expert in. All of that will roll up to me because this sport will kind of have a number on that $20.5 million cap. So, you have to make sure that everybody’s numbers are rolling up correctly to ensure that the cap is not over. It complicates it, but that exists for everybody at every school. So, it’s something to work through.”