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Moving Mountaineers: Rich Rodriguez’s story comes full circle with return to West Virginia

West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez looks on from the sidelines during last week’s game against Robert Morris in Morgantown. (Photo by David Pennock)

MORGANTOWN — The movie Forrest Gump is about a man’s journey through life in the 80s, traveling the world, learning more and more at each stop. He went from Alabama to Washington, D.C., to China, to Vietnam, pretty much all over the world.

In some ways, Rich Rodriguez’s journey after leaving West Virginia is similar to Forrest Gump. Since leaving in 2007, Rodriguez spent time at six different places, including as far as Hawaii, as an analyst, searching to find his place.

“I was in the bayou, out in the desert, in the hills of Alabama, all over the place,” Rodriguez said.

Like Gump, Rodriguez had his ups and downs, but his story came full circle in the end, coming back home to West Virginia.

The betrayal

Forrest Gump and Jenny’s relationship was one of a kind, but flawed. In the middle, Jenny broke things off with Forrest, and there wasn’t a strong belief that the two would get together in the end.

Rodriguez was born and raised in Grant Town, graduating high school from North Marion. Rodriguez was an all-state football and basketball player, but he didn’t have many options to pursue a career in athletics.

Rodriguez decided to walk on to the West Virginia football team. Despite living an hour away from the stadium, growing up, Rodriguez never went to a game.

“The first game I went to was the first game when I walked on to West Virginia,” Rodriguez said. “45 minutes away, I might as well have been an hour and 45 minutes away… My dad figured out that they tailgate pretty good here. He could sneak a little flask in there with a little extra juice in the stands and have a good old time.”

After a couple of years, Rodriguez moved up to get some reps. However, his playing career shifted into a coaching career. While studying at WVU, Rodriguez became a student assistant under Don Nehlan, starting his coaching career.

Rodriguez completed his education and then coached at Salem, where he received his first head coaching gig, eventually becoming the linebackers coach at WVU as a volunteer assistant, not making any money.

So, Rodriguez had to make money somewhere, leading him to his hardest job ever. Teaching driver’s ed at North Marion High School, and bus duty. Rodriguez left bus duty at 1:30 and made it just in time for practice if the three lights in his path all turned green.

“I was a volunteer assistant in 1989, teaching driver’s ed at a high school,” Rodriguez said. “That’s the hardest job I’ve ever had in my life. Teaching driver’s ed in West Virginia.

From there, Rodriguez earned another head coaching job at Glenville State, and then some bigger offensive coordinator jobs until finally getting the head coaching job at West Virginia in 2001.

Rodriguez became a household name and brought the Mountaineers into the 21st century. In his second season, Rodriguez went 9-4, had a bowl appearance, and was ranked a high of 15 in the AP Poll. Rodriguez had WVU as a top team in the nation in the following years, leading his squad to five straight bowl games. In 2006, Rodriguez led WVU to a win in the Gator Bowl, the second-straight year with a big bowl win.

Before the 2007 season, Rodriguez was offered the Alabama job, but turned it down to focus on the year ahead. The job was given to another West Virginian, Nick Saban, and everyone knows how that turned out.

“Where’s my trophy in Tuscaloosa?” Rodriguez told CBS’s Josh Pate. “Where’s my statue outside there? Because if I had gone there, you probably wouldn’t have those six national championships.”

Rodriguez had WVU set up for a promising 2007. And it was. Through 11 games, WVU was 10-1 and ranked No. 2 in the AP Poll. With just one more win over Pitt, WVU had a real shot at playing in the National Championship game.

During the last couple of games, rumors surfaced of Rodriguez leaving the program for a bigger school. Most connected Rodriguez to Michigan, but it seemed far-fetched because this was home.

The rumors didn’t matter. There was still one more game, the Backyard Brawl. In one of the most infamous Backyard Brawls, the unthinkable happened. A high-powered WVU offense was held to just nine points, falling to rival Pitt 13-9, squandering any National Championship hopes.

What’d Rodriguez do? He left WVU without saying goodbye, and before the bowl game, to take the Michigan head coach job. There were definitely issues on both sides, and lawsuits followed with disagreement over Rodriguez’s buyout. It wasn’t pretty. Depending on who you ask, you’d probably take their side.

But one thing is for sure: Rodriguez regrets how he handled leaving.

“There are hard feelings because I didn’t have a press conference to explain why,” Rodriguez said. “I should have. I was told not to, but I should have, I should have had it.”

Take me home

After time in Vietnam and recovering from an injury, Forrest Gump found his calling at a couple of different stops. He was good at ping pong, even went to China, and made a ton of money shrimping. It took a while, but Gump found success.

After firings, coordinator jobs and multiple other stops around the country, Rodriguez found his place at Jacksonville State. He led the Gamecocks to back-to-back nine-win seasons and two bowl appearances. In the final weeks of 2024, Rodriguez had his squad in the Conference USA Championship game.

During the week of the game, Rodriguez was contacted by West Virginia about the head coaching job. WVU didn’t heckle him too much because it knew he’d be busy coaching in the Championship game.

Rodriguez wasn’t affected by WVU reaching out, and Jacksonville State rolled 52-12.

The day after, Rodriguez hopped on a Zoom call for the WVU job, but he wasn’t prepared because Rodriguez was happy at Jacksonville State. If Rodriguez didn’t get the job, he’d still be pretty satisfied at Jacksonville State.

“I would have stayed at Jack State the rest of my career and been perfectly happy,” Rodriguez said. “Love it there. Great friends, we were winning, had success. But here it is, the opportunity to go back home and finish my career at the place that I played at, coached at a couple times, and all that is, is really neat.”

A week later, Rodriguez traveled up to Morgantown for the in-person interview with athletic director Wren Baker, and then, not even a week after the Conference USA Championship game, Rodriguez was named the 36th coach of WVU on Dec. 12.

“It really happened a lot quicker than what most people would think,” Rodriguez said. “And so I didn’t have a lot of time at all to think about whatever, because I was going to be happy staying at Jack State because we were winning, but boy, I could go back home. That would be kind of a unique opportunity. It all worked out great.”

The “backlash”

There was always going to be some backlash when Rodriguez was announced head coach. The last time Rodriguez was head coach, he broke up with WVU without saying goodbye.

Although seemingly a minority, because if you sit at a bar for a couple of minutes, you’d hear people are excited about Rodriguez coming back, some don’t like the idea for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that Rodriguez is an older coach. Rodriguez is 62, which is the 11th oldest in 2025, so who knows how many more years there are to build a program. Since Rodriguez had been at WVU once, it wasn’t hard to get adjusted.

“I think typically, and this is my 8th or 7th, whatever head coaching spot, it takes you six to nine months to kind of get a lay of the land, not just your roster, but the town, the school and the community and all that kind of stuff,” Rodriguez said. “Well, West Virginia took six to nine minutes… I know where all the bodies are buried and the traps are laid, and kind of understand the environment, so to speak. That made it an easier transition.”

Rodriguez talked about how some of his strategies and coaching style might be dated, but he’s adjusted over the years, adapting to the new era of college football.

“I’m a smarter, better coach than I was a week ago, let alone 20 years ago,” Rodriguez said. “If I’m not, then I’m not doing my program or my players or my coaches any service. So, I’ve got to be smarter a week from now. We’re doing some of the same stuff, philosophically, what have you, from 20 years ago, but also I had to grow.”

Then, there’s the elephant in the room. How are fans going to react after the brutal breakup almost 20 years ago? The backlash hasn’t been too vocal, and WVU tickets are hard to get, so there’s a lot of anticipation for Rodriguez’s return, but there have been complaints.

There were even protestors at Rodriguez’s introductory press conference. Rodriguez isn’t worried about the backlash. He brushed off the protestors, calling them Pitt fans, and said the athletic department was a bit more worried about how fans would react.

“We’ll go around and do our little mountain or athletic club tours and talk to people and answer some questions and be up front with them,” Rodriguez said. “They’ve been great. There have been a couple times somebody says something here and there and all that, and I understand that you might be better off if they didn’t have hard feelings, maybe they didn’t miss you. Then push you away, or something like that. But it’s so in the past, and I don’t mind looking back on it.”

The new era

At 62 years old, Rodriguez is back and has a lot of work to do.

WVU’s football program finished below .500 in four of the last six seasons, including last year, where the Neal Brown-led team finished 6-7.

Rodriguez’s goal in his first year is to build culture and bring back his famous “hard edge,” which is playing tough and moving bodies each play. So far, his players have bought in.

“The one thing we wanted to make sure we have in the first year is that we establish the environment and the culture,” Rodriguez said. “Coaches use that word all the time, but do they really adhere to it on a daily basis on everything you do? We are. We are doing that. The players have done a great job of buying into it. We’ll see what happens.”

The culture was one of the reasons Baker made the change at head coach. After the home loss to Baylor and even after the win over UCF to close the season, the life within the fandom was sucked dry. The 2024 season had so much promise, but fell well short of expectations.

It didn’t look like a hard-nose team, which is what Rodriguez is hoping to bring back to Morgantown.

“You could sit in the stands and maybe not understand X’s and O’s, but you could tell if guys are playing hard,” Rodriguez said. “I didn’t do a lot of reviews last year, because last year was last year. But I’ve talked to our guys about a couple of games I’ve watched, and I said we did not play as hard as we could play. There’s never an excuse for that. I don’t care if you’re home on the road, ahead or behind, fourth quarter, first quarter, you’re going to play as hard as you can on every snap, or you won’t play. We didn’t do that at times, and that’s got to change immediately.”

However, most of Rodriguez’s squad is brand new. He’s completely overhauled the roster, bringing in 70-plus transfers on a roster that holds 105-115. Rodriguez has completely taken advantage of the portal, but despite using it within the restrictions, he has issues with the NCAA.

“I mean, how ridiculous is that?” Rodriguez said in March. “There’s another portal thing coming up in a couple of weeks… I wasted all my time coaching this guy, getting him ready, and then he’s getting a paycheck to go somewhere else.”

Rodriguez is very vocal about what he wants the future of college football to look like, and he and new North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick want a professional model, where the transfer portal is free agency, recruiting is the draft, and players are contractually tied into a school.

How does Rodriguez feel about the new rumored College Football Playoff formats, whether it’s 16 teams with five conference champions and 11 at-large teams, or the Big Ten and SEC getting four automatic bids each, or keeping the same 12-team playoff?

“I don’t give a sh*t,” Rodriguez said. “I mean, my give a sh*t meter is a lot less than a lot of stuff. If you win the league, you’re going to be in. Just win the league, like 5-11, all that stuff, whatever. I’m worried about just winning. Let’s win the league. I ain’t worried about, well, this team’s going to vote here, what’s this team going to vote there? If you’re good enough, people will know you’re in the top 12 or whatever. It’s good. We win all of our games. I guarantee we’re in the playoffs.”

The current state of college athletics has pushed legendary coaches away, like West Virginia-born Nick Saban, but it hasn’t pushed away Rodriguez. Rodriguez keeps coming back for more.

Coaching football is a lot better than the other things Rodriguez could be doing with his time.

“Hell, it’s a lot easier than working in a coal mine or digging a ditch,” Rodriguez said. “You know what I mean? I just love, I’ve always loved coaching. I started off at the Division II level, and you’re not taking a job for money or fame or anything like that. You’re taking a job because you love coaching, you love being around athletics, and I still love it.”

The box of chocolates

For WVU fans, it’s nice to have Rodriguez back. Rodriguez is here to do one thing: Make WVU football a competitive program once again. With the current state of college athletics and a complete roster turnover, it’ll be interesting to see if Rodriguez can bring WVU back to where he left it over a decade ago.

Forrest Gump said, “Life was like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get.”

For Rodriguez’s second stint at WVU, you could say the same thing. There’s no telling what you’ll get.

“I’m blessed,” Rodriguez said. “I’m fortunate. It doesn’t happen very often that you get a chance to, I guess, come full circle and come back. There are so many things that had to take place for that to happen, and thankfully for myself, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity that it happened.”

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