West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez Believes Culture Can Take Mountaineers to Mountaintop (2025)

For as much familiarity and nostalgia as there is surrounding Rich Rodriguez’s return to the Mountain State, there’s still a lot of change to stomach this spring as he settles back in at West Virginia.

There are minor alterations, like the traffic circles Rodriguez noticed around campus to accommodate the size of a growing college town, and then there are more wholesale shifts. For instance, Rodriguez brings an almost entirely new coaching staff that inherits a diminished roster.

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“Anytime there's a new staff, there's going to be new terminology, new coaches, new schemes, new methods, you know, new structure,” Rodriguez told Athlon Sports. “So they have to adapt. It's like, everybody's a freshman, right? They've adapted well. We still got a lot of work to do, but it's a good group.”

Since Rodriguez left his alma mater for the Michigan job in 2007, the Mountaineers have not reached the same heights. There were 10-win seasons under Dana Holgorsen, and Bill Stewart filled in just fine in the immediate aftermath, but there was nothing like three consecutive top-10 finishes in the AP poll.

Rodriguez hasn’t exactly been in the wilderness since he left Morgantown. There were the Michigan years, which fell short of expectations until he was fired in 2010. Then there was a successful stint at Arizona that ended in controversy in 2017. Rodriguez returned to the head coaching ranks in 2023 at Jacksonville State, a program in its first year at the FBS level.

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Success the past two years with the Gamecocks coinciding with Neal Brown’s ousterat WVU helped bring Rodriguez back home.

He’s brought familiar faces with him, including former standout Mountaineers quarterback Pat White (assistant quarterbacks coach) and former all-conference running back Noel Devine (offensive analyst). Rodriguez’s son, Rhett, also followed his father from Jacksonville State to be the Mountaineers’quarterbacks coach.

“I said, ‘I'm not hiring you because of what you did in the 2000s, I'm hiring you because you can help us win now,’” Rodriguez said of White and Devine. “Inevitably, they're going to have immediate respect from the players, that's for sure. But they're also going to see that they're very hard workers, they're very passionate and some of the things that we're asking our guys to do — and that hard edge kind of mentality — these guys have lived it.

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“They can tell the guys, ‘Hey, everybody’s done it this way with coach while he’s here.’ So they may look at me a little bit crazy, but not as crazy when they see the success those guys had being in the system.”

Rodriguez is serious about establishing culture. He went viral in March for banning his players from dancing in TikTok videos, again referencing the “hard edge” he wants his team to have.

“The biggest challenge is not even the schemes part of it, the fundamentals part — every coach does that,” Rodriguez said. “It’s really the culture that you want to instill in your program, your methods of doing things. Do you adhere to it? Is it a part of your daily life, how you approach everything and your weight room and your practices and your off-field habits?”

Rodriguez says Jacksonville State experienced the success it did early in its transition to the FBS because of the culture he and his staff instilled. The Gamecocks went 9-4 in 2023 and 9-5 in 2024, punctuated by a dominant win in the Conference USA title game.

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“I think we got there quicker because of the culture that we had, because the players believed in what we do, obviously the staff was all-in, and the school embraced the culture that we had,” Rodriguez said. “So that part of it you can bring to any program, and that's what we're bringing. We think it’s kind of similar to what we had here the first time, but also I think it's better 20 years later for what we did at Jacksonville State and what we're bringing here to West Virginia now.”

In some ways, Rodriguez is literally bringing Jacksonville State to West Virginia as five members of the Mountaineers’ transfer portal class played for the Gamecocks in 2024. That list includes first-team Conference USA defensive back Fred Perry and leading receiver Cam Vaughn.

“We brought them because we think they’re this caliber type of player, but also they can help us in the transition,” Rodriguez said. “They know the system. They know how we do things.”

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WVU brings back a handful of starters from the 2024 team: Running back Jahiem White, wide receiver/cornerback Rodney Gallagher, wide receiver Preston Fox and defensive lineman Edward Vesterinen. Rodriguez’s first high school recruiting class was the highest-ranked of any first-year head coach, but it was still middle of the pack in the Big 12.

Because of all that roster churn, Rodriguez relied heavily on the winter transfer portal and intends to use the upcoming spring window (April 16-25) to address any outlying roster needs. He said among the most critical things for a new coach is roster evaluation, and he felt good about where his staff was in that regard in the lead-up to their April 5 spring showcase.

Even though he’ll be using the portal to round out his roster, Rodriguez laments that there are two separate portal windows — one of which opens up before the College Football Playoff begins.

“We should model after the NFL as much as possible,” Rodriguez said. “I mean, it’s a highly successful organization. They know what the hell they’re doing. They’ve done it for years, and they have hard and fast rules that are fair and equitable for everybody that we should try to follow. And now that we’re paying guys, why wouldn’t we try to follow as many rules as the NFL has as possible?”

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Rodriguez said he believes college football is headed in that direction regardless, and he predicts more structure coming to the sport in the near future as schools try to navigate a constantly changing landscape.

“I think we’re probably going to need congressional or national help and rules to get it more fair and equitable across the country, and that may happen,” Rodriguez said. “I hope it does. But meanwhile, we gotta just play the game the way it is.”

The game has changed a good deal since Rodriguez’s first go-around with the Mountaineers. For one, West Virginia is no longer in the Big East, though regional rival Pittsburgh is still on the schedule. That Sept. 13 date against the Panthers is certainly circled on the calendar considering how the last Backyard Brawl that Rodriguez took part in ended.

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There’s also the fluidity of the NIL landscape to grapple with. And the elephant in the room is the pending approval of the House case, which threatens to turn college sports on its head once more.

Rodriguez also pointed to the investment in football facilities as a major change in the last 17 years, among them a $55 million renovation to Milan Puskar Stadium a few years back.

“I don’t know if I had to leave to get all this done, but I love what they did with the place,” Rodriguez said. “We have everything that you would need from a facility standpoint, a player development standpoint.”

With the facilities up to snuff, coaching staff in place and roster starting to take shape, it’s time for that culture to take root as the clock ticks down to the Aug. 30 season opener against Robert Morris. There’s still a lot to iron out between now and then — including who will start under center for the Mountaineers — but Rodriguez seems dead set on building another winner at his alma mater.

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