Popular Media Personality Does a Complete 180 on West Virginia

Barstool Sports' Brandon Walker has a different outlook on the Mountaineers in 2024.

Maria Lysaker-USA TODAY Sports

After calling West Virginia a "special kind of awful" heading into the 2023 season, Barstool's Brandon Walker is eating his own words.

This time last year, he piled on WVU head coach Neal Brown saying the university made a mistake by not letting him go and even went as far as calling him a coward for not going for it on 4th & short in the Backyard Brawl back in 2022.

What a difference a year makes. In a Big 12 preview on Unnecessary Roughness, Walker picked West Virginia as his surprise team in the conference for 2024.

“This time last year, we were basically standing, looking down in the grave of Neal Brown and we had shovels and we were just throwing dirt on him. It’s over for him, you’re fired! You’ll be gone, forget it Neal Brown. Well, guess what? He started climbing out. He climbed out because he has a good quarterback. He climbed out because he has a good running game. He climbed out because he has one of the best offensive lines in the Big 12. He climbed out because they can score points.

“They have probably the best opportunity of any Big 12 team in America in Week 1. They get to play Penn State at home and you want to talk about a tough or tricky place, West Virginia is a tough or tricky place. I’m not saying they’re going to beat Penn State because I like Penn State a lot, but I think they’ll at least scare them. They have a schedule that looks tough on the surface. Out of the top seven Big 12 teams, they play six of them. Well, guess what? I think they can handle themselves. I think they end up in the top five of this conference. I think they end up in that eight or nine win range. I like West Virginia in the new-look Big 12. I like them a lot.”

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