WVU Football Celebrates Local Miners As It Reveals 2025 Coal Rush Uniforms

We are now less than 48 hours from the West Virginia Mountaineers taking the field for the second-annual Coal Rush game.

While Saturday's showdown at Milan Puskar Stadium between WVU football and TCU will serve as Homecoming for the Mountaineers, the game will also carry a second special meaning to those all across the state of West Virginia as the program once again dons all-black jerseys to honor the state's coal mining heritage. Fans in attendance will also be encouraged to wear black clothing.

On Thursday evening, a social media post by the Mountaineers' official accounts officially revealed this season's Coal Rush jerseys in a short hype video, with footage of a WVU player in the uniforms intercut with footage of West Virginia miners and coal mine imagery, including a scene with a trio of coal miners flexing alongside the player in uniform while they sport their work attire.

The state of West Virginia's coal mining heritage runs deep, as does the ties to the industry for current WVU head coach Rich Rodriguez, who spoke at length this week about what the game means.

“I grew up in Grant Town, which is a coal mining community. My grandfather was the first one, he was a coal miner, and he came overseas,” Rodriguez said during his weekly press conference this Tuesday. “My dad was a coal miner, my brother worked in the coal mines – half the kids I went to high school with go work in the coal mines.” 

“I have so much pride for the people who worked in that industry. I’ve seen it first hand. I’ve seen my dad work day shift, I’ve seen him work afternoon shift, I’ve seen him come home and then come home and work in the garden all day. To me, like when we, or our players or anyone starts being like, man this is hard, that is hard – it's not nearly as hard as going way underground and crawling through there and scraping coal out for a living. That’s a hard job. This stuff is not that hard.”

The Mountaineers lost their first-ever Coal Rush game last season, as they were defeated 28-16 by an Iowa State team ranked in the Top 25. Now, the Mountaineers will hope to get their season back on track this year by making things right for the state's miners and getting a win in the game Saturday while honoring a timeless West Virginia legacy.

“We need to take advantage of it, because we didn’t come out on top for this game last year so this is something that we’ve got to, you know, take pride in and win this game,” Rodney Gallagher III said.