Rich Rod Hints Some Players May Be Encouraged to Move on in WVU Exit Meetings

Losing players to the transfer portal is inevitable. However, sometimes a portal entry may not have been in the mind of a certain player, but they realize it's the best option for them following their end-of-year, 1-on-1 with the head coach.

WVU head coach Rich Rodriguez mentioned on his radio show Monday night that some guys have been nudged out and there will be some "tough conversations" with a few players at the end of the season. This is not unique to Rich Rod and WVU, however. This happens everywhere, every year.

"Most of the guys that we want to retain, we've already met with them, we have a plan about doing it, and we're going to work like crazy to keep them and all that. I'm going to be brutally honest. We call our meeting rooms the truth rooms. We don't ever B.S. our players. If I'm happy with them, you're going to know it; if I'm mad with them, you're going to know it. We'll always tell them where they're at. I'll never tell a guy, well, you're doing great, you're first-team, and you're going to start when I know he's not. I'm going to tell him exactly where you're at and what you need to do to get better. We're going to have some conversations with some guys and not a lot, but some where we'll say, 'If you want to play or if you want to try to get paid a little bit more somewhere else, then you probably should do that.' And those are hard conversations, but we're running a business too."

The reasons for a player being "nudged out" can vary. It could be performance-based, a lack of buy-in, or simply telling the young man that he'll have a better chance to see the field elsewhere. In a lot of ways, college football is becoming more and more like the NFL, which is a cutthroat business.

It works both ways, though.

Some players may tell the head coach in that meeting that they feel like the staff is underperforming or not doing their best by him, thus leading to a portal entry. Relationships in college athletics are still important, but they've become more transactional since the start of NIL.

Rodriguez has a job to do, and if he feels like a particular player is not a fit or won't have a role for the foreseeable future, a "tough conversation" will be had. With the way rosters are built nowadays, he and his colleagues have to construct the best team possible on an annual basis. The days of building a program in a three to four-year span are long gone.

The key piece to his quote, however, is that they're already a couple of steps ahead in terms of retaining the players they want to hold onto. Retention is critical for the overall health of a program, especially for one that can't go out on a shopping spree every year in the portal.

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