West Virginia football hosted a pre-spring football press conference on Thursday, and first-year Mountaineer Head Coach Rich Rodriguez had plenty of thoughts to share headed into the team's first week of spring football practice next week -- practice will kick off on Tuesday, February 25th and will conclude with the Gold-Blue Spring Showcase on April 5th.
Rodriguez discussed in detail a number of topics with the media, including why he feels he was brought back to Morgantown, the culture he wants to build, and even his thoughts on WVU's regular season finale in 2024. We take a look at what was talked about below.
WVU HC Rich Rodriguez at his first Spring Football presser since returning to Morgantown.
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Why He Was Brought Back For A Second Tenure
Rodriguez understands more than anyone that he is beloved by a good chunk of the fanbase as a native son and one of the most successful coaches in program history.
But Rodriguez is open in nearly every press conference he does these days about his desire to essentially be a better coach tomorrow than he is today. And when prompted, he dismissed the idea that his hire was patially due to a desire to return to the 'good old days.'
"I didn't get hired for nostalgia reasons, I got hired to win," Rodriguez told the press assembled at the Milan Puskar Center.
Rodriguez addressed that their is an "expectation" that he will come out and win football games, and seems bent on following through on previous promises to turn the Mountaineers into a national championship contending program.
Building Culture
When asked about the process of instilling his own brand and culture inside the program at WVU, Rodriguez touched upon his dedication to building the type of environment and mindset he wants to see inside the football facilities in Morgantown.
"Every coach talks about culture and how important it is, but do they actually live it, do they have a standard that is held every day," Rodriguez opined to the press. "What was here a year ago or three months ago is not nearly as important as what's going on right now."
Rodriguez is known for his tenacious approach that demands grit and hard work from his players and is known for mottos such as 'Hold The Rope' and "Hard Edge' -- and it's clear from his comments on Thursday that he will be doing a thorough job implementing that mentality."
WVU's Season-Finale Loss to Texas Tech In 2024
Rodriguez did touch upon some of the film he's watched since taking the gig in Morgantown to properly acclimate himself to his returning players and the Big 12 Conference.
He did have to sit through some footage that didn't set easy, however -- WVU's season finale 52-15 loss to Texas Tech that former coach Neal Brown described as an "ass-whooping." Rodriguez apparently didn't think much of the performance himself.
"I watched a little bit of the Texas Tech game, until I threw up," Rodriguez said jokingly. "I watched a little bit of that and got sick."
Hopefully, Rodriguez won't face any 37-point defeats in his first season back at the helm of his alma mater.
Roster Make Up Post-Spring Football
Rodriguez also acknowledged that while it may seem like most of the needed roster work was done in the winter with the transfer portal and with high school recruits, it's hard to tell what the team will look like with unlimited transfers and a spring portal window coming in just a couple months.
"Because there is a second portal period, the roster may look at little different in May," he said.
His Quarterback Room
Rodriguez brought in a pair of upperclassmen former SEC transfer quarterbacks in Jaylen Henderson and Max Brown this winter, in addition to retaining last season's backup Nicco Marchiol, who has two seasons of eligibility remaining and is 3-0 as a starter for WVU.
And these three talented frontrunners sit ahead of a room full of other returners and incoming freshmen. It signals that he is taking his quarterback group very seriously -- he described his offensive system as "quarterback-centric" during the presser.
"We think we have good competition in that room," Rodriguez said. "I think we're in good shape at the quarterback position with the guys that we got. There's some really good skill in that room."
The NIL Landscape
During Rodriguez's last time around in Morgantown, he did not have recent changes to the sport's landscape such as the transfer portal and NIL money to deal with. And while he experienced it to a lesser extent at Jacksonville State, all of those major changes have come after his gig leading a program at the Power 4 level. However, Rodriguez seems to have developed a model he believes will succeed.
"You better have a little bit of a plan instead of just grab-bagging...we're not going to pay our starting quarterback 18 percent of [the budget]," Rodriguez said.
He said he expects his model to be taking shape and becoming firmly entrenched at the end of this coming summer, as the NCAA's new revenue sharing program also gets underway.
We have a model in place and we have that system ready to go...on July 1, the school takes ownership [with revenue sharing] and then that model starts to take place."