Sunday Morning Thoughts: Rich Rod, WVU May Have Found a Niche in Portal Recruiting

You're never going to check all of the boxes and fix every issue in one offseason. Still, you can change the trajectory of the program, and that's what Rich Rodriguez and the West Virginia Mountaineers did in this transfer portal cycle.

At the same time, it's not a group that's going to automatically push West Virginia into Big 12 contention in 2026. If you look over every position group on the roster, you're going to notice a common theme — inexperience, not a ton of production, and a lot of turnover. That recipe typically makes for some bumps in the road.

When folks see the Mountaineers land Oklahoma QB Michael Hawkins Jr., Oregon pass rusher Tobi Haastrup, or LSU's WR TaRon Francis, and DB Jacob Bradford, optimism begins to overflow, creating some unfair and perhaps unreasonable expectations. The reality is, these are long-term bets.

Keep in mind that West Virginia is bringing in well over 40 true freshmen, which is a large chunk of your 105 or so-man roster. Add on that you have two quarterbacks with limited experience battling for the starting job, one running back with Division I experience (Cam Cook), and no bona fide No. 1 or No. 2 receiver, and you should start to understand why I'm hesitant to put big expectations on this group next fall. That said, the floor AND ceiling are much higher.

But the additions of these younger, once highly touted players, just might be the route for the Mountaineers to go in the transfer portal when it comes to trying to land top-tier talent. Sure, they'll always add some productive veterans and maybe some younger productive guys that showed some things at a lower level, but to land "top-shelf" talent out of the portal, it's more attainable by pursuing those who haven't logged a ton of snaps.

Those guys are going to come much cheaper than a Power Four quarterback who has two years of starting experience or even a three-year starting offensive lineman from a P4 league. They are going to get overlooked more often than not because coaches want immediate fixes, especially those with a big pool of money. Why take a chance on a former four or five-star recruit who hasn't played over a multi-year productive player from the Group of Five? That's how most of those programs think.

The portal approach will change the deeper Rodriguez gets into his tenure. However, specializing in landing these unproven former top-200, top-300 recruits is something I expect to be a staple for this staff, whether it's year two or year six. Bet on those guys becoming the players everyone thought they would be coming out of high school, even if it takes a couple of years to see it shine through.

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