Rich Rodriguez Confident WVU Can Prevent Top Players From Leaving for Bigger Programs

The number one concern every college football fan has, aside from the schools with big-time money, is player retention. Gone are the days when you could slowly bring a kid along and ease him into a starting role by year three as a redshirt sophomore. If the young man isn't seeing the field in the first two years, he's probably considering transferring out.

But on the flip side, players who do come in and play right away and play well are going to hear from those big-time money programs, where they will try to convince them to hop in the portal. Nowadays, coaches are concerned with every single player on their roster.

Due to arriving late a year ago, Rich Rodriguez and his staff weren't able to hang on to some of the players he would have liked to. Some of that was due to not having the staff in place quickly enough, but the other piece of it was the financial side. Rodriguez has stated numerous times that he feels much better about things heading into this offseason and confidently spoke on player retention during his radio show on Monday night.

"Somebody could go out and make a ridiculous deal, and you're like, well, gee whiz, I mean, I think he's good, but he ain't that good kind of deal. We feel very confident that the ones that we think have earned success and are about to take another step in that avenue, we'll be able to do it."

Some schools have the ability to buy their roster every year, and while that's technically true for every school, there are levels to it. West Virginia doesn't have Texas Tech, Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, or Georgia type of money. They may be able to throw a big package out there for one or two guys per cycle, whereas those aforementioned programs can spend $40 million+ on their entire roster via NIL deals. Developing through the high school ranks is the route for WVU.

"We still need NIL help because if we want to go win a championship, we got to go win a championship. We're going to be in such a better position from the revenue share standpoint than we were this year. We can find players, and you got to make sure you buy the right ones, right? We're still going to be a developmental program, and we'll sign more high school guys than portal guys, but we got to be the best in the country at developing all of our players. Not just the high school kids, but the transfer guys. The transfer guys, you've got to develop them faster. We still feel good about that and that we can get it done."

MORE STORIES FROM WEST VIRGINIA ON SI