Rich Rod Gets Painfully Honest About the Challenge of Winning in New Era of CFB

Since the day he returned to Morgantown, West Virginia, head football coach Rich Rodriguez has made it very clear that he believes WVU can not only win in this new era of college football, but can hoist its first-ever national championship trophy at some point.

While he still remains confident in that possibility, he's also not naive as to the competitive environment in college football and how things could go from bad to worse in a hurry if the NCAA doesn't put some guardrails on this thing soon.

In a recent interview with Pete Thamel of ESPN, he gave a very candid response when the subject of winning championships was raised.

"Yeah. I think that, and I said this when I took the job, 'We can win it at West Virginia. We can win a lot of games.' Money has become more of a factor in the last year and a half than it was a year and a half ago, but I still think we can. ... Can you win a national championship? I still think so, but if rosters go to $80 million or $90 million, then it's going to be like, OK, now you're really taking the chances down a little bit. When rosters that are for a full share, rough share of $14 million, but rosters, some of the people are doing $25 [million] or $30 [million], you still got a chance. I think we can compete with that. When rosters get up to $50 million, $60 million, $70 million, they'd have to be idiots not to be able to get a really good roster with that, right? So that would make it a little bit more difficult."

The truth hurts...

West Virginia University head coach Rich Rodriguez | Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

The NCAA doesn't get much right, so it's hard to put faith in them getting this right as well, but everyone knows that $50M+ rosters are bad for the sport. Guys making six figures as backups? As John Calipari once stated, what are these kids (young men) going to do when they go from making that type of money to having to go out in the real world and settle for a job making 50k a year? That's only part of the problem.

Competitively speaking, it's going to further dilute the product if there isn't a legit salary cap of sorts eventually put in place. Schools like West Virginia, which have been among the most successful in the history of the sport, yet don't have the financial capabilities to be in the same ballpark as everyone else in their league (mainly thinking Texas Tech here), will be at a major disadvantage.

You know the old saying, it's not the X's and O's, it's the Jimmys and the Joes... well, if we get to a point where some programs are spending $50-60 million more on their roster than other teams within the conference, there's no out-coaching that. Heck, even a $20-30M difference is a big deal. I mean, just look at Major League Baseball, for example. Small market teams are constantly living in a state of rebuild, while the Los Angeles Dodgers are able to pay one guy more than what one of those teams spends on its 26-man roster.

WVU can absolutely return to national relevance and could possibly do so as early as this year. But to be a sustained winner, they, and others, are going to need something to be done about the ridiculous amount of money being spent on rosters.

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