Rich Rodriguez is back home to the place where he belongs.
That place would be West Virginia — the state where he was born, and the program he once had on the cusp of a National Title.
The head football coach left Jacksonville State to return to his alma mater where he once played defensive back. The 61-year-old spent the last 17 years away from the program, only to find his way back.
Over the last three years, he has done a fantastic job reestablishing his coaching chops. Jacksonville State had three straight nine-win seasons. Rodriguez collectively had a 27-10 record with an 18-3 mark in conference play. It was the first head coaching position Rodriguez had since his days in Tucson with the Arizona Wildcats (which ended in 2017).
Rodriguez has bounced around a few places. He famously flamed out at Michigan after a rough three-year period. That was not a fit schematically or culturally for either party. His time in Arizona was decent. The team had five winning seasons out of six years. However, Rodriguez was let go after sexual misconduct allegations.
Short stops at Ole Miss, Hawaii, and Louisiana-Monroe followed before he eventually became a head coach again. The real question persists: Can he replicate the magic he once brought to Morgantown?
Rodriguez-led teams in the early 2000s were aggressive, supremely fast, and very tight-knit. The innovation Rodriguez brought to the offensive side of the ball is still used today by programs all over the country. When playing one of his teams, you knew you’d be involved in a pseudo-track meet. His quarterbacks, receivers, and running backs were all lightning-quick. In a sense, they were interchangeable, too.
The Pat White-Steve Slaton duo helped West Virginia go on a three-year stretch where they won 32 out of 37 games. this included wins in the Sugar Bowl and the Gator Bowl. Rodriguez recruited guys who weren’t necessarily highly rated by various services. He made his bones in the states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Rodriguez then started pulling guys from Maryland and other parts of the South.
It’s all about building a culture — something he spoke about with one of his former players on Friday morning, Pat McAfee, on The Pat McAfee Show. Repeatedly, Rodriguez said that he could win a National Championship at West Virginia and that coming up short nearly two decades ago still eats at him. McAfee was stationed in Morgantown for his show, and the crowd was in a major frenzy. They even spontaneously broke out and started singing the famed John Denver song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” which is often associated with the football program.
There’s not another guy who knows the football program better than Rodriguez. With the Big 12 being relatively wide-open and less competitive compared to the Big Ten and the SEC, there’s a real chance we could see a West Virginia squad in the College Football Playoff sooner rather than later.
