Rich Rod Fully Expects WVU to Compete for Championships Again, ‘It’s Personal’

Brighter days are ahead for West Virginia football, and Rich Rodriguez is sure of it.

WVU Athletics Communications

Depending on the time in which you grew up, you may have been spoiled as a West Virginia football fan, only seen the dark days, or have seen it all, from Major Harris leading WVU to a national championship appearance to the dark November night in 2007 to the Air Raid era to things going downhill over the last seven years.

Those who grew up in the early 2000s were spoiled. Pat White, Steve Slaton, Owen Schmitt, Noel Devine, the list goes on and on just from that first era under Rich Rodriguez. The Mountaineers won 33 games in three years, including a pair of BCS bowl wins, taking down Georgia in the Sugar and Oklahoma in the Fiesta.

And really, since then, aside from a couple of blips on the radar where it looked like something may materialize, West Virginia has been longing to get back to the glory days. Even Rich Rod kept an eye on the Mountaineers from a distance during the 17 years he was gone. Now he has a chance to put the program back on the map and make it nationally relevant again.

“It is personal," Rodriguez said during an interview on Next Up with Adam Brenneman. "Not just because I coached here before. I coached here before four times. I was a volunteer one time. I was a student assistant, and then I was a head coach for seven years. But also, I played here, grew up here. I know what this job, I know what this school, what this program means to the state of West Virginia. We’ve got great people. We’ve got kind of an underdog mentality. People doubt that we can have success here. And when West Virginia University does well, the whole state does well. In particular, when sports teams do well, everybody in the state rallies behind it and I saw that obviously when I was here the first time in the 2000s. And I see it now, it’s going to happen again when we’re having success, and we’re winning and competing for championships. This place is already pretty crazy and fanatical about it, and it will be even more so.”

Turning the corner in year one was always a long shot, and it became impossible with the never-ending list of injuries the Mountaineers sustained throughout the course of the 2025 season. When you play five quarterbacks and you're on your fourth and fifth running backs, it makes life pretty difficult.

Rodriguez flipped the roster once again this offseason and was able to acquire better talent out of the transfer portal, thanks to having more resources in place, a year to evaluate, and not having to simultaneously assemble a coaching staff and piece a roster together.

We can expect to see a much better product in 2026, but it still may take some time for things to get back to where they were when Rodriguez left in 2007. He is bound and determined to make that happen, knowing how much it means to everyone in the state.

“I want them to say, boy, it was fun to watch them," he responded when asked what he wants people to say about the job he did five to ten years from now. "We had a great time, it was the best time of being a fan of West Virginia football. You know, I hear a lot of people saying about that 20 years ago. I want them to say it now. The excitement that we have, the pride that we have watching West Virginia football is second to none.”