Jul 2, 2025
File photo WVU athletic director Wren Baker, left, is shown with football coach Rich Rodriguez.
MORGANTOWN — It is still the elephant in the room and probably will be until we can get a fix on what the West Virginia University football team looks like this fall.
That elephant, of course, is the new/old coach, Rich Rodriguez, who is in the early phases of something that no PR campaign can help … and that is gaining acceptance from the Mountaineer fans in what truly is his second coming.
When he was announced as the replacement for the departed Neal Brown, it was a choice that was heralded by most WVU fans but there was a vocal minority, still upset over the way he left the first time for Michigan 17 years ago after losing to Pitt in a game that would have propelled Mountaineers into a national championship match up with Ohio State.
His backers are willing to give him time, feeling certain he can repeat his early success. A second group, part of the minority, is taking a “wait and see” approach, fans who will accept him as a winner but who still have bruises from his exit.
And there are fans, quite honestly, who don’t want him coaching the team.
He understands that, as does athletic director Wren Baker, the man who fronted the hiring of him but who also admits that there was more to it than just finding the best replacement and admits that donors and the new system that is now in place in college football were driving forces behind the scenes.
Rodriguez addressed the situation on the day he held his welcoming press conference.
“If they weren’t upset, maybe that would bother you,” he said of the fan base’s reaction to his departure then. “I think the timing and all and being a local guy — and I had some different frustrations over how we wanted the program to keep going — and I made a mistake leaving but I also made a mistake not having a press conference to explain it all.”
But that, he says, was then. This is a new now.
“The time for apologies is kind of over now,” he said that day. “Things are now positive. There’s a handful of people still upset over how I left and they come up with all kinds of conspiracy theories that are absolutely ridiculous, but overwhelmingly the majority of the people I’ve seen and spoken with have been great.”
He hasn’t made an apology tour, instead understanding that when you win all is forgiven in our world as it exists and he has buried himself into convincing recruits, rather than fans, that he was the proper hire.
Baker, speaking the other day, said he believes the reception of Rodriguez has been fine, maybe even beyond that.
“I think a lot of people have come around. Our season ticket sales are the highest they have been since 2013. That tells you there’s a lot of excitement out there,” he said.
“I know there are still some people who are still not there yet. I get that and I think Rich gets that,” he continued. “Rich has done the only thing he can do and that is to say he wished he’d never left and he’s going to do the only thing he can, which is to work his tail off every day to earn back the support and trust of those who might be skeptical.”
It has been an obsession as he completely remade the staff and his roster. There are 70 or upwards new players coming in this season from high school, junior colleges and Power 4 or Group of 5 transfers. Rodriguez’s recruiting left no place for any of them to hide.
His obsession has left a deep impression on Baker, who did not know him when he was compiling a 60-26 record in his first seven years, that even counting that 3-8 first-year disaster as the program was being reshaped from the Don Nehlen style of football to his without the aid of a transfer portal or liberal transfer rules.
“I will tell you he’s an incredibly hard worker, incredibly energetic and passionate,” Baker said. “He comes in every day and I tell him every day that if he’s lost anything off his fast ball, I’d hate to see what that fast ball was.”
Was his decision to leave flawed, or, perhaps even more so, how he handled the departure?
No one really doubts that it was and there probably was a lot going on behind the scenes other than the loss to Pitt that helped drive him away. Certainly, Baker accepts that those who look unforgivingly at Rodriguez are being too harsh.
“Ultimately, we’re allowed as human beings to learn from mistakes; we’re allowed to mature in life and I would hope people will give him a chance to earn their trust back. But I also think — and I think Rich understands this — you can only control what you can control and you can’t control the decisions other people make,” Baker said.
“At some time, you have to say I’m going to try to prove through my actions and my work what I’m about and hopefully you will be able to see it and move on.”
That is how Rodriguez has gone about it. He is laser focused on succeeding, not to prove anything to others, but to fill a certain void within him.
“I always tell people my happiness is based on winning,” he said. “If we’re winning, I’m happy. If not, I’m miserable … and probably everyone around me is, too.”
It may not be a way you will find in coaching textbooks or vocalized at coaching clinics and Rodriguez understands and accepts that.
“Is that the program you have to have to have success?” he asks, rhetorically. “No, but that’s my formula. It’s been that way since I started playing Little League baseball. If we won, I had a good day and if we lost I had a miserable day.”
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