Rich Rodriguez Says WVU Can Contend Sooner Than People Think Despite Setbacks

Returning to national relevance may not happen as quickly as West Virginia fans initially thought when Rich Rodriguez regained the reins of the program back in December, but the head ball coach still believes it can happen soon.

On his radio show Monday night, WVU play-by-play man Tony Caridi asked Rodriguez if he thinks it will take four years to build a championship-level roster like it did in his first stint in Morgantown in the early 2000s.

“It shouldn’t take as long, I think, because you can get some portal guys that can help, but I don’t know if you can just build off of portal guys. I think we still got to be a developmental program and build most of our roster up. It shouldn’t take that long. I would expect us to be as deep as we need to be… You can do it in a couple years. I’m still optimistic you can do it in one year, so I’m not giving up on this year.”

He's absolutely right, by the way. Relying on the transfer portal is not a business West Virginia can afford to get into. Think of it like this... college football is getting closer and closer to an NFL model, but right now, it's more like Major League Baseball, where there is no salary cap. Sure, there's the max rev share cap that each school has to adhere to, but if a program wants to pour $50 million into its roster, it can do so through NIL.

Until that goes away and things are more equal, which may never happen, the Mountaineers will be similar to a small-market team in MLB, which relies more on player development and drafting, or in WVU's case, high school recruiting, than they will in free agency, aka the transfer portal.

The good news? You can still be successful as the "small market team" in a world with no true cap. Look at the Cleveland Guardians, for example. They rank 25th out of 30 teams in payroll, but are sitting in a first-place tie in the American League Central division. This century, they've won 90+ games 11 times, which signals they can compete at a high level consistently. It's not a perfect comparison, of course, but it's about as close as you're going to get.

“There’s not as many as those hidden gems as there used to be, but that doesn’t mean there’s not good players that we can get. We can get really good players here," Rodriguez said. "We’ve got a great environment, a great fan base, great facilities. We’re going to have enough in the rev share to compete, and hopefully we can have enough in the NIL, so somebody don’t one, take our best players, and two, this guys we really want money is not going to be a factor. We may not compete with an Ohio State or Texas Tech or that kind of money, but we can compete with the rest of them, or at least that’s what we’re aiming to do.”

The key here is nailing your evaluations. Now, it's certainly more difficult to project how a high school kid is going to fill out and develop, but they've been doing that for years; it's nothing new. Bringing 80+ new faces into a program isn't easy, as you're seeing every Saturday. They had no choice; they had to put a team together. But moving forward, they can have a more concentrated list of targets in the portal because they'll be only looking to add a dozen or so guys. That will lead to a higher hit rate and perhaps the ability to land better talent.

Still, you need money to make it happen, and Mountaineer fans who own businesses or just simply want to donate money can help. Rich Rod will get this ship turned around. He's just got to get through some choppy waters first.

“It’s not my first rodeo. I’ve done this 28 years, and this is what? The sixth or seventh time I’ve been a head coach? Every first year is similar in that regard. This is my profession; I’ve done this before. I know what the hell I’m doing. It’s just painful. It’s painful for us to watch. It’s painful for our fans to watch. It’s painful for everybody that loves our program, but the stuff will get right. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I’m not one to say, it’s going to get right next year. Hell, I want to get it right right now. Is there going to be some inconsistency? I hope not much more than we had the last couple weeks.”

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