Rodriguez Confident Mountaineers Will Restock Their Roster – West Virginia University Athletics

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Last Friday morning on West Virginia MetroNews’ “Talkline” radio show, listeners heard an older, more experienced, more reflective Rich Rodriguez discussing his life experiences over the last 17 years since his sudden departure from West Virginia University.
 
Most of us have moved on, but some, including one person who briefly interrupted West Virginia’s press conference reintroducing its 32^nd head football coach as its 36^th, couldn’t.
 
Times around here were just too good back then for some to so easily forget.
 
Now, times are not so good, which is why Rodriguez is back.
 
“It was an interesting journey going out west, going down south and really, to come back home, it’s really been a unique opportunity to have because it doesn’t happen very often,” Rodriguez told the show’s retiring host, Hoppy Kercheval.
 
Rodriguez said he was perfectly happy coaching at Jacksonville State, but if he ever got the opportunity to return to the power conference coaching ranks, he always felt the best place to do it was West Virginia University – a place he knows so well.
 
“The timing was perfect,” he explained, adding, “I know I’ve got to win games and there are still a lot of folks that are upset, so I’ve got to earn their support back, but we’re willing to do that, and we are going to do everything we can to have West Virginia football be relevant nationally again.”
 
The passing years have a way of providing some perspective that we don’t normally have when we are experiencing life in real time. Rodriguez readily admits his younger self was impatient at times, which made it challenging for an organization so used to doing things a certain way to change so abruptly. 
 
Ultimately, it couldn’t.
 
Now, 17 years later, West Virginia University is right back where it was in 1950, when Art Lewis was hired to revive the program, or in 1966, when Jim Carlen was brought here for some reinvigoration, or in 1980, when Don Nehlen was asked to recharge the batteries.
 
Each delivered.
 
I’ve been regularly coming to West Virginia football games since the mid-1980s, and I can also remember going to games in the old stadium back in the late 1970s, and I can never recall there being this much apathy.
 
Anger, yes, but not apathy.
 
Four hours before the regular season home finale against UCF, while walking up to the stadium to do our “Mountaineer Tailgate” pregame show, there was not a single car parked in the Silver Lot! 
 
I was stunned, to say the least.
 
Recently, in a span of a couple of months, my eye doctor, my dentist and my dermatologist each gave me their clinical, sober (and fairly accurate) assessments of where things are with the program right now.
 
Four seven-loss seasons in six years have a way of doing that.
 
And the ones who are not indifferent have grown impatient.
 
Rodriguez, now 61, has seen a great deal in the many places he’s been since his departure. Those experiences have changed him in many ways, but in other ways, he’s still the same.
 
“I think my experiences over the last 17 years at other places have helped me,” he admitted.
 
“Sometimes, you don’t appreciate what you’ve got until you don’t have it anymore, and that’s kind of an easy thing to say, but that’s true as well,” he added.
 
The impatient fans have now turned their attention to the transfer portal, today’s lifeblood of college football. 
 
Right now, they see too many going out and not enough coming in.
 
The Rich Rodriguez of 17 years ago would have responded much differently than the Rich Rodriguez of today when Kercheval asked him about the transfer portal last Friday.
 
“It’s not surprising, because college football has changed so much,” he began. “A lot of guys go into the portal because they want to see what their value is. Some guys got in because they want an opportunity to play more, and some guys go in and they don’t know what the hell they want to do.
 
“I’ve tried to meet with all of them and talk to them about what our program is going to be about and what we can do for them, but I’m not going to beg them,” he explained. “We are going to be in a great position to help them, not just football-wise, career-wise and academically, but also financially.
 
“But if they are going to go chase the money and some school is going to pay them big, big money – more than we would pay – and they decide to do that, that’s fine. I’ll go get another one,” he continued. “I’m not going to panic about it. I know some folks panic about it, ‘Oh, this guy just got into the portal!’ There are a lot of good players out there. I don’t want to lose any of our good players, but it’s inevitable. It happens. If they do that, then I will go find one myself in the portal.”
 
Isn’t that what WVU alum Curt Cignetti did recently at Indiana?
 
Cignetti, two years older than Rodriguez, saw the program he inherited lose 39 players to the transfer portal, including 11 to other power conference programs. West Virginia fans got a pretty good look at one of them – Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Sorsby.
 
Cignetti ended up adding 31 players to his roster from the portal, including several on defense AFTER spring football practice. Last year, there were 3,800 total transfers and more than 1,200 entered the portal in the spring. 
 
Indiana, by the way, made it to the college football playoffs in Cignetti’s first season there.
 
It’s not about picking first; it’s about picking right.
 
Go back through time, all the way back to Rodriguez’s days coaching in the West Virginia Conference, and you will see that he has always trusted his eyes.
 
Years ago, he would jokingly say a certain player “couldn’t play dead in a western (movie).” The point he was making was that his opinion matters most to him, not what others think.
 
Rodriguez built, rebuilt and rebuilt again Jacksonville State during his three seasons there. This stuff isn’t new to him.
 
“I know it’s Group of Five, but last year at Jax State, we had 60 new players,” he explained. “We lost nine starters to bigger offers at Power Fives, and we just got into the portal and got some more good players and ended up having a pretty good year. 
 
“I’m not going to panic about it, but it is disappointing, because there are some really good kids that probably get bad advice, go into the portal and it isn’t what they think it’s going to be. We will replace them; I’m not worried about it.”
 
Neither am I.
 
Happy Holidays Mountaineer fans!