Rich Rodriguez Has Started a New In-Game Tradition for Fans to Take Part In

Rich Rodriguez - innovator. That's likely what it would show in the dictionary if his name were featured inside. And for more reasons than you may think.

Sure, his high-flying, uptempo spread offensive attack has its own respected place in innovation, but some of West Virginia's top traditions were started by Rich Rodriguez during his first tenure here, such as the playing of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" following a Mountaineer win, and the famous first down chant.

Rodriguez is now looking to add to that gameday tradition with a new fun thing for the fans to get in on before kickoffs. You may have noticed the players and coaches clapping above their heads multiple times during Saturday's game against Robert Morris to the song "The Stroke" by Billy Squier.

“One-hundred percent," Rodriguez responded on his coach's show when Tony Caridi asked him if he wanted it to be a new tradition. "We did it in practice. Like, when we do special teams, and typically, if you’re not involved in one of the special teams, you’re doing individual work with your position coach or whatever. But when we do kick off, everything stops. Because typically when you’re kicking off, it’s after something good — it’s beginning of the half, beginning of the game, or after you score a touchdown. The only time it’s not is if it’s after a safety, so everybody should be in a good mood when we do a kickoff. So when we go practice and we do kickoff team, everybody in the program, not just the players, gets on the home side and they start clapping that over your head kind of deal, and everybody gets into it. Now, what I’d like to do is boy, it would be great to have 60,000 Mountaineer fans do the same thing. Stand up, stretch their legs out a little bit. Hopefully, they didn’t have too much moonshine or beer, and they might miss the clap once in a while because they’re a little too intoxicated and spent too much time in the Blue Lot. But no, it would be a great tradition for us to do every time after we kick off.”

If you've never heard of the song, well, here you go, and be prepared to clap over your head to the beat for the Backyard Brawl on September 13th.

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