Rich Rod Reveals WVU Has More Than 25 Players on Multi-Year Deals

Contain. Contain. Contain. That's the message that West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez and defensive coordinator Zac Alley are preaching to their defense this week.

Retain. Retain. Retain. That is what is on the mind of GM Chuck Lillie (as well as Rich Rod) as they move throughout the season and try to get the football program back on track in Morgantown.

The transfer portal won't open back up until the end of the season, and with the new eligibility rules in place, players will only have one free transfer where they will be able to play without penalty. The second time they transfer, they will be required to sit out a year and won't be able to get that year back. Hopefully, that prevents players from hopping from school to school to some degree.

“Can you imagine if you’re an NFL franchise and every one of your 53-man roster guys was in the last year of their contract and they become a free agent? I can imagine the stress that the organization, the general managers, and the ownership would be under- like, we got to sign the whole team back. That’s never happened," Rich Rodriguez said.

West Virginia University Vice President and Director of Athletics Wren Baker and head coach Rich Rodriguez | Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

"In college, basically, we have that scenario in a lot of places. I always say we’ve got to get the right guys, and if we picked the right guy, he picked the right place, we want him to have his whole college career here. Can we lock him down for the next year or two and have a two-year deal or three-year deal? But you’ve got to have some funds to do that. You can’t promise something that you’re not going to have. We’re slowly building toward that, which I’m very grateful for. We’ve kind of got a plan to try before the portal comes open that we’ll have the guys locked down, staying Mountaineers, hopefully throughout their entire college career.”

The contract negotiations are never-ending. There is no offseason for that. Lillie and his "front office" staff are always looking at the money, seeing what they have available, and hoping to lock more players up to long-term deals. There are several players on the roster who they really like that are only one-year contracts. The goal is to shrink that number before the portal period arrives in January.

“It might be more than 25-30," Rodriguez said when asked how many players currently have multi-year deals. "We got a plan to try to get more as the season goes along. We want it to be where if it’s somewhere close, they’re not going to leave our program. Even if we’re a little bit less paying them, if they like playing here at West Virginia, they like the program, they like what they’re doing, they like the school, want to get a degree from here, all that kind of stuff should play a factor to it. Inevitably, money is going to play a big factor, maybe the biggest, but we want to have the other stuff make them want to stay.”

Rodriguez did not reveal which players are on multi-year deals and who they would like to get locked up, and the reality is we will probably never know. If no one else is going to make those deals public, you can sure as heck bet that WVU won't.

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