West Virginia University President Makes Very Bold Claim After 5-7 Season

West Virginia University president Gordon Gee dropped a bizarre quote about the team's terrible football season.

The Mountaineers finished a very disappointing 5-7 after entering the season with lofty goals. When JT Daniels joined WVU, there was a lot of energy around the program.

Instead of meeting expectations, Neal Brown and the Mountaineers struggled mightily. Well, Gee doesn't think it's that big of a deal because the schedule was "the toughest" in all of college football.

West Virginia had a disappointing football season. (Photo by G Fiume/Getty Images)

"We have had a challenging football year as we all know. One of the things that I started realizing is the fact that really we really did put our football coach in a very challenging position because we played two Power 5 teams right off the bat. The other thing is, the recent process came out noting that we had the toughest football schedule in the country. The fact that we’ve gone 5-7 in a very competitive environment is something I take a lot of pride in, because given everything, we played rather well," Gee said during a Monday press conference for new AD Wren Baker, according to WVMetroNews.com.

Will Gordon Gee's excuse fly with West Virginia fans?

The Mountaineers did have a schedule that featured games against Pittsburgh, TCU, Kansas State and Texas. WVU went 0-4 in those games, but there were also a lot of easier opponents that didn't represent massive challenges. WVU suffered losses to a 4-8 Iowa State and a Kansas team that finished 6-6.

It's a bit hard to have sympathy for Gee's point of view when the Mountaineers could have won both of those games or even split them in order to finish .500. Fans don't want to hear about how challenging the schedule is. They want to see wins.

West Virginia finished the season 5-7. (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)

It's not like West Virginia had to line up every week against SEC West or Big Ten East opponents. It's the Big 12. The conference was better than expected, and put a team in the CFP. However, let's not pretend like it's a juggernaut week after week. That's just not true.

Will West Virginia improve next season? (Photo by John E. Moore III/Getty Images)

West Virginia has opted to bring back Neal Brown next season, and while Gee clearly gave him a pass for this season, he definitely shouldn't expect it to happen twice.