WVU football is entering their third week of preseason practices as the Mountaineers get closer to kicking off the 2025 season, and some clips coming out of Morgantown have a lot of WVU fans excited – including West Virginia alum and ESPN College GameDay analyst Pat McAfee.
Last Friday saw the team open up about 40 minutes of practice to the media for the second time since camp began on July 31st, and while some footage of players such as Jahiem White showed that the Mountaineers are starting to look sharp on the gridiron, it was a clip of Rich Rodriguez getting a bit fired up that truly went viral.
In the footage, Rodriguez lets loose a string of profanities as he yells at someone for not quite delivering on their expected duties. On his daily ESPN talk show on Monday, McAfee, who spent multiple seasons on a Rodriguez team during the coach's first stint in Morgantown, played the viral video of Rodriguez for his audience and offered some insight as to what was playing out on film.
"But what was happening here is that Rich Rod was ripping the shit out of somebody, and that particular somebody was the guy wearing the stripes – I think, this has not been confirmed, but I have seen this particular action before and he'll really give the tell at the end here because the guy in the stripes fucks up again and then he has to raise his hand and says 'we're going in? We're going in,'" said McAfee.
RICH ROD IS ALL THE WAY BACK #PMSLive https://t.co/BlXaK64l9G pic.twitter.com/h5ysM0s2BJ
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) August 11, 2025
From there, McAfee offered some details as to how Rodriguez likes to run his practices and how one of his key offensive philosophies may have played a role in his outburst toward what McAfee presumes is a team equipment manager.
"What happened here, a little explanation...that's stripes right there, that's an equipment manager. That person wears the stripes and everything like that. he used to spot the ball for the drills. Rich Rodriguez's old mantra used to be 'spot the ball,'" McAfee said.
"The statement was spot the ball and get the fuck out of the way, that is the entire, that is what the actual mantra was. And it was to refs. We're going to tell these refs to spot the ball and get the fuck out of the way, cause we're running fast and beating people out of the way. So the equipment manager has to spot the ball."
McAfee went on to mention that this isn't the first time that he's seen such a tirade from Rodriguez on the practice field, and he finds it an encouraging sign to see that Rodriguez still has such a fire in him.
"I've seen this before, it is a fantastic wizardry of words, is what Rich Rod is able to do. And the fact that he's still this fired up about a ball being spotted is a magical thing."