There's No Easing Into It for WVU: 'August 31st, We Better Be Ready'

West Virginia opens up the 2024 season with a stiff challenge against top-10 Penn State.

Matthew O'Haren-USA TODAY Sports

Most teams in college football start their season with a cupcake game against some FCS team before matchup up with another Power Four program. Not West Virginia. Most teams play eight or nine Power Four games in a given season. Not West Virginia.

This marks the sixth straight year (excluding the COVID-shortened 2020 season) where the Mountaineers will play 11 Power Four opponents. It's also the fourth straight year where they open the season with a Power Four opponent and just the first time for that game to take place at Milan Puskar Stadium.

WVU head coach Neal Brown has took a different approach to fall camp the past two years, going more physical and do more thudding to get his team prepared for a massive season opener against Penn State. Would he like to open up against Albany before welcoming in Penn State? Sure, but it's out of his control.

“It is what it is at this point. I think it’s a great showcase game," Brown said earlier this week. "If you asked any coach, we’d love to ease into it, right? We’ve played a couple of FCS first games and those are positive. You learned a little bit more about your team before you play a rivalry game. But that’s not what we have, so it’s like, eh. It is what it is. We play Penn State, they’re a top ten team in the country. I was looking at a bunch of draft boards and I went over this with our team the other day, there’s a whole lot of Penn State guys listed. FOX is probably going to kick it off at probably 12:06 or 12:07 on August 31st and we better be ready. It doesn’t matter what I’d like for it to be or who I’d like for it to be against. We play Penn State and we got to perform. The expectation is that we will and that we’ll perform at a high level.”

Brown isn't fond of the construction of the schedule, but there's nothing he or relatively new AD Wren Baker can do about it. Schedules in the future, however, will look quite a bit different. Brown and Baker have laid out their plan for schedule construction on several occasions, stating they'd like to host an FCS opponent, play a Group of Five team, and one Power Four team - that team preferably being Pitt. The other target goal is to play in Morgantown as much as possible with seven home games being the fewest they'd like to have on the docket.

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