West Virginia football Head Coach Neal Brown is sitting on an ever-hotter seat with each passing day.
Brown has already seen fans asking for his termination on social media, fans are wearing brown paper bags at home losses, and there is already a billboard campaign launched to call for his job. After a historically significant loss for the program to Baylor, it's safe to say the vibes around the program are not great at the moment.
It also appears that those paid to cover the sport nationally for some of the largest networks in the country see the writing on the wall for Brown. On Monday's episode of the Cover 3 Podcast by CBS Sports, the analysts on the show discussed which Power 4 conference head coach they see getting fired first. While there seemed to be consensus that more teams are hesitant to make such moves with revenue sharing looming as a new piece of most program's budgets.
However, their also was some consensus that there is always at least one coach given the pink slip from a power program, and Brown's name didn't take long to come up in the conversation as show host Chip Patterson brought him up.
" his whole thing about having fun," said CBS Sports analyst and former Florida State and NFL quarterback Danny Kanell.
Of course, the first question brought up -- coming from CBS Sports analyst Bud Elliott -- was whether or not the program has interested candidates.
"Do you got someone lined up for it," asked Elliott. "Am I missing somebody who is an obvious candidate."
And in no surprise to the fans of the program, their was an obvious candidate on Patterson's mind, and it's the same candidate many in the fanbase are clamoring for.
"Yeah, he's on Sirius XM -- he talks real fast, he's got a national championship ring, he can go right back and tell you about all the hills in West Virginia," Patterson said, alluding to former Florida State and Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher.
Unfortunately for fans in Jimbo mode, there was also a consensus that it might not be quite good enough a gig to lure Fisher out of retirement, especially as Fisher looks to rehabilitate his legacy after a disappointing tenure in College Station.
"Does he want that job though," asked CBS Sports analyst Tom Fornelli.
"That's the question I've got," added Kanell. "He doesn't need the money, that could hurt the legacy worse than it's already been hurt. That's where a lot of these coaches, Dan Mullen is another one, they're going to sit there and if they aren't fully enamored and feel like it's a place they can kind of be guaranteed 8 wins, they're probably not going to take it."
And while the analysts on the Cover 3 podcast might be overlooking how strong the connection is for Fisher to his home state and region, they're not wrong that it is the type of program where if things go wrong, it can further damage the legacy of Fisher. It certainly isn't a guaranteed 8-win per season job, as Kanell pointed out and both Brown and Dana Holgorsen have proved over the past decade. So if WVU fans want to see Fisher in Morgantown, they may want to hope to play on the sentimental value of coming home for Fisher.