Sources: West Virginia to employ Baker as brand-new AD

10:07 AM ET Pete ThamelESPN West Virginia is expected to employ Wren Baker as its next athletic director, sources told ESPN.A deal has

not been signed however is anticipated to be settled in the next 24 hours, according to sources.Baker is the athletic director at North Texas and became one of the most respected young administrators in college sports

since getting here there in 2016. Sources told ESPN he’s concurred in concept to a six-year offer to end up being the Mountaineers’new athletic director.Baker managed North Texas ‘impending transition to the American Athletic Conference from Conference USA and helped develop North Texas’ facilities to some of

the very best at the Group of 5 level.

Throughout Baker’s period there, North Texas has reached the 2nd round of the NCAA guys’s basketball tournament and gone to bowl games in six of the previous seven seasons. North Texas (7-5) dips into UTSA this weekend in the Conference USA football champion game.Baker’s hires at

North Texas include guys’s basketball coach Grant McCasland, who has either won the routine season or league competition in Conference USA the last three years.For Baker, the appeal of the West Virginia job is the

chance to lead a Huge 12 program. He’s a graduate of Oklahoma State, where he worked as a graduate assistant coach for Eddie Sutton.Baker has actually been choosy about his next action throughout the years, and has actually remained at

North Texas in part due to the fact that of that school’s aggressiveness to keep him. Baker’s newest recognized salary is just under$800,000 each year, which puts him amongst the highest-paid athletic directions in the Group of 5. His settlement from West Virginia isn’t understood yet.For West Virginia’s brass, Baker’s roots growing up in rural Oklahoma were considered as an asset, as his background fits the school’s blue-collar ambiance. Baker is a previous high school principal in Oklahoma, and his background consists of a stint as a head college basketball coach and work as an athletic director at the Division II and NAIA level.Baker will take control of for Shane Lyons, who was fired in mid-November and has considering that taken a role in the Alabama athletic department.West Virginia still hasn’t declared openly whether football coach Neal Brown is returning, but his chances have increased substantially after closing with 2 wins in the last 3 games, consisting of over Oklahoma and at Oklahoma State to end up 5-7. Brown would be owed nearly$17 million for the rest of his contract, which monetary dedication loomed as one of the reasons Lyons was fired.