MORGANTOWN — It’s been almost a month since West Virginia football’s Gold-Blue Spring Festival, or spring game. That means it’s been a month since Rich Rodriguez talked in front of the local media. However, Rodriguez has done some national media appearances and recently sat down for a Q&A with ESPN’s Pete Thamel.
With Thamel, Rodriguez discussed multiple topics, including quarterback, the roster turnover, freshman Matt Sieg and the new-look defense. But what really stood out, and what Rodriguez brought up a couple of times, was the financial situation WVU is in compared to the rest of college football.
Last year’s team obviously wasn’t up to the standards of a lot of people. The team finished 4-8 and finished third-to-last in the Big 12. One of those eight losses was against a Group of 5 school. Realistically, finishing anything better than that was a long shot because Rodriguez was hired in December and didn’t have a lot of time to build a recruiting class, so most of the team was stuck together with transfers.
In a short amount of time, Rodriguez had to make phone calls to donors to give him money so he could build a competitive roster. It didn’t work.
Last year was Year 0, realistically, because Rodriguez didn’t get a full offseason. This year is Year 1, really, with a full high school recruiting class and offseason.
“Last year, we didn’t have a whole lot of time, and then had very little money,” Rodriguez told Thamel. “This year, we had a whole lot of time and a little more money. So both of those equations helped out… This year, we had the full rev share from the school and we had time to evaluate more. And so, not that last year they were all bad players, but this year we could be a little more purposeful in what we got and what we needed, and our approach going forward with it. So I’ve seen a difference.”
The talent that WVU brought in shows that the program has more money. The Mountaineers flipped three 4-stars from Power Four programs, offensive lineman Kevin Brown and athlete Matt Sieg from Penn State, and then running back Amari Latimer from Wisconsin. All three of them had heavy interest from top Power Four schools locally. Out of the portal, Rodriguez landed running back Cam Cook, who led the country in rushing last year, and former Power Four 4-stars wide receiver TaRon Francis and Oregon defensive lineman Tobi Haastrup.
In this era of college football, it’s an arms race. The teams with more money tend to have better success. Ohio State’s 2024 roster was one of the most expensive, and it won the National Championship. Texas Tech had a pricey roster last year, and it won the Big 12.
WVU won’t have the same amount of money as those schools. But it can be close so that the gap can be made up with coaching. The issue becomes when rosters get more expensive, where that gap becomes too wide. Unfortunately for WVU, that’s where college football is headed, which is why Rodriguez is so favorable for guardrails, so it’s not like the MLB, where the richest teams have the most success.
“Can you win a national championship? I still think so,” Rodriguez said. “But if rosters go to $80 million or $90 million, then it’s going to be like, OK, now you’re really taking the chances down a little bit. When rosters that are for a full share, rev share of $14 million, but rosters, some of the people are doing $25 [million] or $30 [million], you still got a chance. I think we can compete with that. When rosters get up to $50 million, $60 million, $70 million, they’d have to be idiots not to be able to get a really good roster with that, right? So that would make it a little bit more difficult.”
For this season, Rodriguez has the money to compete. In theory, the team should have a better team than the 4-8 season that was produced from last year’s roster. That’ll be to be determined because in a lot of spring Big 12 projections, WVU is still at the bottom of the conference.
We’ll see if the money will fix that.
“I think, again, the season would tell the tale of it,” Rodriguez said. “But is money a factor? A hundred percent. And anybody that says it’s not is joking you.”
