MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Neal Brown leans forward in his chair, which might as well be a soapbox.

“I’ll tell you, this is a unique area for food because there is a ton of Italian influence here,” Brown says.

In the early 1900s, tens of thousands of Italians immigrated to West Virginia to work in the state’s rapidly growing steel and coal industries, bringing that home cooking with them.

“So there are some great, old-school Italian American restaurants down in Clarksburg and Fairmont just south of here,” Brown says. “But people don’t realize that. It gets overlooked.”

He sits back, hands interlocked behind his head. The history lesson is done, but Brown’s not. Because the head coach of West Virginia just so happens to feel the same way about his football team.

“I just think our best players are being undervalued,” Brown says. “The amount of production we have coming back and what we’ve added, it’s significantly better than where people have us in preseason.”

Coming off an unexpected 9-4 record in 2023 and entering his sixth season there, West Virginia was picked seventh in the Big 12 preseason poll and landed just outside the initial AP Top 25 rankings. Brown says folks are once again sleeping on the Mountaineers, a mentality that dates to more than a year ago, when he sat down in front of a Big 12 media days contingent that voted WVU dead last in the preseason poll.

“I can guarantee you that we’re not going to finish last,” Brown said last summer. “We’re looking forward to proving everybody wrong.”

Scoreboard. WVU tied for third in the Big 12 standings and remained in the conference-title race until the final weeks, ending the year with a bucket of mayonnaise dumped over Brown’s head after routing North Carolina in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. Brown went from a scorching-hot seat to vindicated, earning a one-year contract extension through 2027. It gave the 44-year-old an opportunity to bet on himself yet again.

Brown signed the extension in March. And a voluntary pay cut.

“You can talk about selflessness and being a good teammate all you want to, but you also have to show those things,” he says. “You should have win-wins. I think it was good business for both sides. I like it here.”

As part of the extension, Brown essentially forwent $400,000 in salary increases over the next three years of his contract, electing to reinvest that money in his staff. All eight of WVU’s returning assistant coaches received raises, including coordinators Chad Scott (offense) and Jordan Lesley (defense), as did numerous support staffers.

Brown’s $4 million salary in 2024 ranks in the middle among conference head coaches. Between the pay cut and an additional bump from the university, more than $700,000 was added to the staff salary pool for the upcoming season, with additional flexibility for the future.

“I tried to talk him out of the pay-cut piece, to be honest. I was worried that people wouldn’t believe he did it voluntarily,” WVU athletic director Wren Baker says. “It’s highly unusual for a coach to do that, but I think he wanted to invest in those around him.”

There was no posturing. Brown’s reputation as a pragmatic and analytical thinker precedes him, a badge from his days as an innovative Air Raid disciple and offensive coordinator at Texas Tech and Kentucky, followed by a successful head coaching stint at Troy. He knows that if WVU can continue the momentum of last season and can be in the mix for a Big 12 title and the expanded College Football Playoff, West Virginia will reverse that pay cut and then some. He has reason to be confident in that outlook. Aided by the recent growth of the Country Roads Trust NIL collective, which has helped recruit and retain talent, Brown has the deepest and most experienced roster of his tenure — starting with quarterback Garrett Greene.

“If you put up Garrett’s numbers in terms of key stats and win-loss record, he’s going to be near the top of our league,” Brown says. “But he’s not getting talked about that way.”

The fifth-year senior threw for 2,406 yards and 16 touchdowns in his first year as a full-time starter in 2023, finishing sixth in the Big 12 in QB rating (142.2), fifth in yards per attempt (8.7) and with only four interceptions, the fewest among qualified passers. But his dual-threat capabilities set him apart, leading all Big 12 quarterbacks with 772 rushing yards and another 13 touchdowns.

It gave WVU a triple dipper in the backfield alongside running backs CJ Donaldson Jr. (798 yds, 11 TDs) and Jahiem White (842 yds, 4 TDs), combining for the best rushing attack in the conference and fourth-best in FBS at 229 yards per game. All three are back in 2024 behind an offensive line with three full-time returning starters, led by preseason All-America left tackle Wyatt Milum — another overlooked player who Brown believes will be a first-round NFL Draft pick next spring.

“He hasn’t given up a sack in two years and he didn’t even make the all-conference team last year,” Brown says.

The offense wasn’t pure ground and pound. WVU had 34 plays of 30-plus yards last season, tied for fifth in the Big 12. The biggest issue was efficiency. West Virginia scored touchdowns on 60.3 percent of red zone trips in 2023 (eighth in the Big 12), and Greene completed only 53 percent of his throws, lowest among the league’s qualified passers.

“He’s better than that,” Brown says. “We’ve worked hard to change his fundamentals.”

An older and replenished group of receivers should help. Hudson Clement, Preston Fox, Traylon Ray and tight end Kole Taylor are back, and WVU added a pair of power-conference transfers in Jaden Bray (Oklahoma State) and Justin Robinson (Mississippi State).

Up front defensively, Brown expects linemen Sean Martin and Tyrin Bradley Jr. to take leaps and Ty French (Gardner-Webb) and T.J. Jackson (Troy) to bolster the rotation. The questions are in the secondary, where all-conference safety Aubrey Burks and transfer corner Garnett Hollis Jr. (Northwestern) will lead a revamped group.

“This is the most talent we’ve had in the secondary, but they have to be able to mesh together,” Brown says.

The 2024 schedule doesn’t do the Mountaineers many favors, with nonconference games against Penn State and Pitt and a grueling five-game stretch to open league play: Kansas, at Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Kansas State, at Arizona. But in a new-look, 16-team Big 12 that expects plenty of parity, West Virginia has as much of a path to the top as anyone — a journey two years in the making.

🗓️ 2024 West Virginia Football Schedule#HailWV pic.twitter.com/1oBhlJwlAT

— West Virginia Football (@WVUfootball) January 30, 2024

Coming off a disappointing 5-7 2022 campaign and with Texas and Oklahoma on their way out the door, Brown hit the reset button on his team’s identity, homing in on discipline, effort and taking care of the football over raw talent, and turning those intangibles into tangibles. WVU saw marked improvement in penalties and turnover margin in 2023 after ranking last in the Big 12 in both the year before.

In a suddenly wide-open conference, with a first-round Playoff bye at stake, that attention to detail can reverberate.

“The talent disparity from team one to 16 in our league is not this drastic gap like there is in other leagues,” Brown says. “So many games come down to the fourth quarter. Your margins are small, so we have to be really good situationally.”

The make-your-own-luck mindset is particularly crucial at West Virginia, where geographical and financial challenges are baked in. It’s one of the reasons Baker opted for patience when he was hired in November 2022, just as the Mountaineers wrapped up a second straight losing season and public perception of Brown was cratering. Baker assessed a head coach who still had the respect and support of his staff and the locker room, as well as being someone who understood the proud tradition of a place that has always done a little more with a little less.

Wren Baker, left, chose patience regarding Neal Brown after becoming West Virginia’s AD. (Ben Queen / USA Today)

“The longer you’re in a job, the better you recognize what works,” Brown says. “We’ve done a better job of understanding our location and the type of personalities and players that can be successful here. I think it’s carried over.”

Baker, like many athletic directors, has plenty of big-picture items crowding his desk. There is the widening financial and competitive gap between the top of the Big Ten and SEC and schools like West Virginia, whose $106 million athletics budget in fiscal year 2023 was in the bottom half of the Big 12. There are the strains of a conference that now stretches 900 miles south and 2,000 miles west of Morgantown. There is the pending House v. NCAA settlement that stands to reorient college sports, including the burden of an additional $20-plus million in annual revenue sharing that Baker is determined WVU will fully participate in.

All of it can make the future seem murky at best. But the intriguing subplot of a league without Texas and Oklahoma is a relatively level financial playing field for the new Big 12. Conference title runs and Playoff bids are now much more attainable for a Mountaineers program that hasn’t won a league championship since joining the Big 12 in 2012.

And it’s not lost on Baker that the little things have put Brown and WVU in position to seize those opportunities — in 2024 and beyond.

“West Virginia is very much a fit job. Not just anyone can come in here and win, particularly in football,” Baker says. “Coach Brown and his staff have done a good job of focusing on what they can control. Eventually, I believe the scoreboard metric catches up to that.”

(Top photo: Ben Queen / USA Today)

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) – West Virginians will see American Water contractors in towns and cities across the state to perform lead pipe inspections.

The inspection requires contractors to find the water service line point of entry, determine the material of your water line, perform a scratch test, and fill out a survey for the Customer Service Line Material Map.

If contractors find lead, they will replace those lines for free.

Customers can self report. A self-reporting survey explains how to locate the water service line, how to identify the material, how to perform the scratch test, and how to send clear pictures.

“What we are asking is for customers to report the material of that line and report that to us, so if it is lead,” West Virginia American Water Megan Hannah said, “we can identify a point later to replace that material for them.”

West Virginia American Water expects to have all lead services replaced by 2031.

Copyright 2024 WSAZ. All rights reserved.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Inside a white-walled conference room, a speaker surveyed hundreds of state lawmakers and policy influencers, asking whether artificial intelligence poses a threat to the elections in their states.

The results were unambiguous: 80% of those who answered a live poll said yes. In a follow-up question, nearly 90% said their state laws weren’t adequate to deter those threats.

It was among the many exchanges on artificial intelligence that dominated sessions at last week’s meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, the largest annual gathering of lawmakers, in Louisville.

“It’s the topic du jour,” Kentucky state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, a Republican, told lawmakers as he kicked off one of many panels centering on AI. “There are a lot of discussions happening in all of our state legislatures across the country.”

While some experts and lawmakers celebrated the promise of AI to advance services in health care and education, others lamented its potential to disrupt the democratic process with just months to go before November’s elections. And lawmakers compared the many types of legislation they’re proposing to tackle the issue.

This presidential election cycle is the first since generative AI — a form of artificial intelligence that can create new images, audio and video — became widely available. That’s raised alarms over deepfakes, remarkably convincing but fake videos or images that can portray anyone, including candidates, in situations that didn’t occur or saying things they didn’t.

“We need to do something to make sure the voters understand what they’re doing,” said Kentucky state Sen. Amanda Mays Bledsoe.

The Republican lawmaker, who chairs a special legislative task force on AI, co-sponsored a bipartisan bill this year aimed at limiting the use of deepfakes to influence elections. The bill would have allowed candidates whose appearance, action or speech was altered through “synthetic media” in an election communication to take its sponsor to court. The state Senate unanimously approved the proposal but it stalled in the House.

While Bledsoe expects to bring the bill up again next session, she acknowledged how complex the issue is: Lawmakers are trying to balance the risks of the evolving technology against their desire to promote innovation and protect free speech.

“You don’t want to go too fast,” she said in an interview, “but you also don’t want to be too behind.”

Rhode Island state Sen. Dawn Euer, a Democrat, told Stateline she’s concerned about AI’s potential to amplify disinformation, particularly across social media.

“Election propaganda and disinformation has been part of the zeitgeist for the existence of humanity,” said Euer, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Now, we have high-tech tools to do it.”

Connecticut state Sen. James Maroney, a Democrat, agreed that concerns about AI’s effects on elections are legitimate. But he emphasized that most deepfakes target women with digitally generated nonconsensual intimate images or revenge porn. Research firm Sensity AI has tracked online deepfake videos for years, finding 90% of them are nonconsensual porn, mostly targeting women.

Maroney sponsored legislation this year that would have regulated artificial intelligence and criminalized deepfake porn and false political messaging. That bill passed the state Senate, but not the House. Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont opposed the measure, saying it was premature and potentially harmful to the state’s technology industry.

While Maroney has concerns about AI, he said the upsides far outweigh the risks. For example, AI can help lawmakers communicate with constituents through chatbots or translate messaging into other languages.

Top election officials on AI

During one session in Louisville, New Hampshire Republican Secretary of State David Scanlan said AI could improve election administration by making it easier to organize election statistics or get official messaging out to the public.

Still, New Hampshire experienced firsthand some of the downside of the new technology earlier this year when voters received robocalls that used artificial intelligence to imitate President Joe Biden’s voice to discourage participation in a January primary.

Prosecutors charged the political operative who allegedly organized the fake calls with more than a dozen crimes, including voter suppression, and the Federal Communications Commission proposed a $6 million fine against him.

While the technology may be new, Scanlan said election officials have always had to keep a close eye on misinformation about elections and extreme tactics by candidates or their supporters and opponents.

“You might call them dirty tricks, but it has always been in candidates’ arsenals, and this really was a form of that as well,” he said. “It’s just more complex.”

The way state officials responded, by quickly identifying the calls as fake and investigating their origins, serves as a playbook for other states ahead of November’s elections, said Cait Conley, a senior adviser at the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency focused on election security.

“What we saw New Hampshire do is best practice,” she said during the presentation. “They came out quickly and clearly and provided guidance, and they really just checked the disinformation that was out there.”

Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams told Stateline that AI could prove challenging for swing states in the presidential election. But he said it may still be too new of a technology to cause widespread problems for most states.

“Of the 99 things that we chew our nails over, it’s not in the top 10 or 20,” he said in an interview. “I don’t know that it’s at a maturity level that it’ll be utilized everywhere.”

Adams this year received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for championing the integrity of elections despite pushback from fellow Republicans. He said AI is yet another obstacle facing election officials who already must combat challenges including disinformation and foreign influence.

More bills coming

With an absence of congressional action, states have increasingly sought to regulate the quickly evolving world of AI on their own.

NCSL this year tracked AI bills in at least 40 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C.

As states examine the issue, many are looking at Colorado, which this year became the first state to create a sweeping regulatory framework for artificial intelligence. Technology companies opposed the measure, worried it will stifle innovation in a new industry.

Colorado Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, said lawmakers modeled much of their language on European Union regulations to avoid creating mismatched rules for companies using AI. Still, the law will be examined by a legislative task force before going into effect in 2026.

“It’s a first-in-the nation bill, and I’m under no illusion that it’s perfect and ready to go,” he said. “We’ve got two years.”

When Texas lawmakers reconvene next January, state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione expects to see many AI bills flying.

A Republican and co-chair of a state artificial intelligence advisory council, Capriglione said he’s worried about how generative AI may influence how people vote — or even if they vote — in both local and national elections.

“Without a doubt, artificial intelligence is being used to sow disinformation and misinformation,” he said, “and I think as we get closer to the election, we’ll see a lot more cases of it being used.”