WVU offensive coordinator Chad Scott will serve as the Mountaineers’ interim head coach for the team’s upcoming bowl game. Courtesy photo

MORGANTOWN — West Virginia will not have the sit-around-and-wait problem other bowl teams will need to negotiate.

This coming Tuesday, will find Chad Scott and the Mountaineers in Frisco, Texas for a night game — only the second bowl game of the lengthy 41-game bowl season this December and January.

Scott is the choice of Athletic Director Wren Baker to coach the now-rudderless football team — rudderless, because Baker fired Coach Neal Brown in the aftermath of a long loss to Texas Tech and a record of 6-6 in 2024. Baker did not hire Brown. That was the job of frockless AD Shane Lyons, before he was unceremoniously fired himself.

There is only one bowl game prior to this one, and that comes tomorrow.

It’s the Frisco Bowl in Frisco, Texas at Toyota Stadium. The 9 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time) game pairs the Mountaineers with Memphis, the 25th-ranked team in the latest national poll.

Memphis went 10-2 overall, with its losses coming at the hands of Navy and Texas-San Antonio.

Memphis played a schedule that wasn’t top heavy with the giants of the college game. It had wins over Rice, South Florida, Tulane and a toothless Florida State team.

West Virginia clinched bowl eligibility, when it beat Central Florida in its 11th game, moving its record to 6-5.

Ticket prices for the night game are not just for the well-heeled. The midfield seats go for $65 (plus the ever-present $5 ticket fee). And in today’s world of merchandising and purchasing, those paperless ducats will be sent out on a “AXS ticketing app to a mobile device.”

Baker addressed the media and others last week concerning West Virginia’s ongoing search for a new head coach.

He told the assembled crowd, “This is an attractive position because of the fans.” He spoke of “salary cap” considerations and looming “transfer portal” happenings that opened on Dec. 9. Part of the “salary cap” item includes the now vitally important NIL (name, image, likeness) area whereby athletes can be paid.

There was a buyout clause in Brown’s severed contract, but that amount was not mentioned. Just how attractive the head coaching position is, could be debatable. WVU has only about 1,770,000 people in the whole state. You have to recruit against the football-crazed states that border you in Ohio and Pennsylvania as well as Virginia (which has Virginia Tech, James Madison, Liberty and Virginia) and Kentucky (with Kentucky, Louisville and 2024 bowl entry Western Kentucky). Maryland has yielded many useful players in the past, and Maryland’s Terps could resurface as Big 10 contenders some time soon.

WVU’s NIL money isn’t minimal. In 2023, WVU had $354 million to offer its athletes. That’s the same neighborhood as that money heaped together by Ohio State, Penn State or Virginia Tech have amassed.

Coaches have been dismissed or left as often as athletic directors have come and gone in recent times. And the university will have a new president soon enough with E. Gordon Gee leaving soon.

Seems to be unsettling times in Morgantown. And firing a coach who has now been to two consecutive bowl games, might give somebody other than Rich Rodriguez or John “Jimbo” Fisher reason to do a fathomless amount of research, prior to accepting the position.