Rich Rodriguez, perhaps for the first time since accepting the head coaching gig at West Virginia earlier this month, has exerted his power. And people are paying attention.
On Saturday, it was announced that the Mountaineers were finalizing a three-year deal to bring Oklahoma co-defensive coordinator Zac Alley -- who had formerly coached under Rich Rodriguez at Jacksonville State -- to the Mountaineers. The news left the Oklahoma fanbase in shambles, as their Top 20 defense was a bright spot in an otherwise disappointing 6-7 year in the SEC. And West Virginia fans were ecstatic at the news.
And to be fair to both fanbases, they both shared appropriate reactions to the news. West Virginia and Oklahoma shared the Big 12 as their home conference for over a decade, but Oklahoma is wide considered a "blue blood" -- or college football royalty -- while the Mountaineers are often look at as a tier below.
Oklahoma has consistently been a national championship contender in most seasons for decades. The Sooners own 7 national championships to WVU's 0, 4 playoff appearances since the Colle Football Playoff to WVU's 0, and are 5th in FBS all-time winning percentage and 6th in all-time wins compared to WVU ranking 31st and 16th in those respective categories.
And now, the Sooners are in the SEC, widely regarded as the top college football conference nationally, while the Mountaineers occupy a Big 12 consistently considered just the third or fourth best conference. And head to head, the Sooners are 12-3 against WVU.
So to steal a coordinator from Oklahoma to persuade them to take the same role at WVU -- a historically less successful program with less resources in a lesser conference -- is practically a college football coup.
And it's not a situation where Oklahoma fired Alley and he was looking for new work. As mentioned previously, the Sooners' defense was a bright spot this past season. And while Head Coach Brent Venables has not had the best tenure in Norman, there is no indication that this will have been his last season at the helm of Oklahoma football. The Mountaineers just managed to steal a sitting SEC coordinator with a strong resume and lure him to a program considered to be "lesser" in the sport. That's not only no small feat, but it's damn big deal.
And when it's said that Alley has a strong resume, it's not an understatement. He was mentored by Venables and Dabo Swinney as a student and graduate assistant at Clemson, where he helped coach on two separate national championship winning teams. His defense at Oklahoma this season was ranked in the Top 20 in FBS yards allowed per game and Top 35 in scoring defense and total yards allowed.
And in his second season with Jacksonville State -- which was the program's first at the FBS level -- the Gamecocks finished 9-4 overall on the back of a defnese that ranked 33rd in FBS in scoring defense and 43rd in total yards allowed. It's pretty clear that Alley has learned from the best in the business and knows how to coach defense. And now he's bringing those skills and some SEC experience to Morgantown.
Since Rodriguez's hire earlier this month, he's earned a few commitments out of the transfer portal and brought in a number of assistants for his staff, but they've been for the most part smaller names either following him from JSU or reuniting with him after some previous stint together. A couple coaches have even been retained from former coach Neal Brown's staff. But none of the incoming players or coaches have until now been names that really shake up the college football scene or turn a lot of heads.
But with Alley coming to WVU, that all changes. He's the type of coordinator that attracts top talent and changes a program's defensive prospects over night. Whether it was reuniting with a former coach, the money committed by WVU to bring Rodriguez top assistants, or the prospect for Alley of having full control of the defense instead of sharing it with his mentor Venables that inspired the move, no one is fully sure. It's likely some combo of the three, but in the end, it also doesn't really matter.
What matters is that Alley is coming to Morgantown. Rich Rodriguez has officially made his first real power move of his second tenure leading WVU football, and it is a big one.