The college football world was shaken up this weekend after Penn State fired its head coach, James Franklin, after a 3-3 start. The Nittany Lions had a lot of preseason hype, ranked No. 2 in the AP Preseason Poll after a semifinal finish in the College Football Playoffs last year. It was a shocking firing of a coach who won 10 games in his past three seasons. Penn State paid the buyout reportedly around $50 million to remove Franklin of his duties, putting the rest of the FBS on notice.

Multiple head coaches provided their thoughts on the news, and West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez was one of them, saying there’s a lack of patience in college football now, with administrations not waiting until the end of the season to let go of a coach.

“There’s certainly less patience with that,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t know if it’s a money thing, whether it’s the money getting paid to the coaches or the money getting paid to the players. I think it’s probably more the pro mentality, right? The NFL, they’ll fire you after six weeks sometimes, a year and a half, two years. I think part of that is the reason there’s less patience in college athletics.”

It’s hard to be patient in turning a program around in this era of college football. Indiana’s Curt Cignetti arrived in Bloomington before last season and now has the Hoosiers ranked No. 3 in the country. Administrations are now wondering why our program can’t do that, especially when Indiana’s resources aren’t the best for college football.

Rodriguez said there’s a lot more to turning around a program than it may seem.

“I don’t know if there are a lot of folks who don’t understand everything that’s going on in public,” Rodriguez said. “One, why did they win so quickly? Or why aren’t they winning so quickly, or why all of a sudden they’re not winning national championships? There’s always more to the story than what everybody probably knows. But that’s kind of the nature of our business. You kind of got to take it if you’re going to be in this profession.”

Rodriguez is a part of a rebuild and trying to emulate what Cignetti did at Indiana. He brought in a lot of transfers from his previous school at Jacksonville State, where he had success, and a bunch more. So far, Rodriguez hasn’t seen the instant success. WVU is 2-4 heading into its seventh game against UCF.

Rodriguez knows, especially after all the midseason firings, that fans could be getting impatient with his team. It’s not entirely Rodriguez’s fault. The team is dessemiated with injuries at key offensive positions. He’s on his third-string quarterback and running back, and down a top receiver.

Rodriguez is learning to be patient himself, dealing with the injuries.

“I wish I had more patience,” Rodriguez said. “I have no patience, and that’s never changed. Why do you like to go fast? Because I have no patience. You want to win like yesterday. I stand up here and preach, let’s have patience until we can get this roster where we want to go, get the system in place and that kind of stuff, but hell, ain’t nobody more impatient than I am. I’m trying to figure out what we can do right now, every day. What can we do right now to win? Legally in the rules, of course.”

It’s hard for Rodriguez and fans to wait. It’s an ongoing problem, not just in football. Social media and technology have made everything so more accessible and instantaneous. Everyone has the attention span of a goldfish, and it doesn’t help when other programs are finding success.

Rodriguez is just trying to stay patient, even though he dislikes it, and is hoping fans do the same. There are still six games left in the season with a lot of opportunities to win. The second half starts against UCF on Saturday, which is a winnable game and a chance to get the season back on the right track.

“Sometimes it’s painful to wait or have to understand you gotta have a little luck, and have a plan to get fix what you need to get fixed,” Rodriguez said. “Trust me, we’re in the process of fixing. Some of that involves external things that we’re in the process of doing, but it’s not fun right now to go through some of the stuff that we’re going through. I’m not giving up on this year’s team at all. I like our guys. They still work. They got a great attitude. It’s the second half of the season. Fresh Start. I like the way we handle the bye week. I think they’ll be ready to play Saturday.”