MORGANTOWN — West Virginia football’s 2025 season ended on a sour note. The Mountaineers harnessed some momentum at the tail end, by upsetting Houston, beating Colorado and then having close games against Arizona State and TCU. But that came to a screeching halt when the best team in the Big 12, Texas Tech, came to town and handed WVU its first shutout of the season, 49-0.
The reality set in that in Rich Rodriguez’s first season back in Morgantown, he produced one of the worst seasons in recent history at 4-8. The expectations he set before 2025 of bringing a championship to West Virginia seemed far off.
Fast-forward through national signing day, the transfer portal and staff changes, spring football is here. On March 3, Rodriguez had his first press conference since December. Even after all that transpired last season, Rodriguez made sure, at the end, that the goal heading into 2026 is the same as before 2025.
“I think I said this a year ago, we’re going to work as hard as we can and bring a championship to West Virginia,” Rodriguez said. “It was a tough start at times, but I’m not backing down from that. I still think we can win the Big 12, which is a really good league. I think we can get in the College Football Playoff. I think you can win a national championship in West Virginia.”
Realistically, as a coach, that’s what you have to say, even if you don’t truly believe it. But, the way Rodriguez said it made you think he truly does.
In this era of college football, how? Especially after the product on the field last year, it seemed very far away. The Red Raiders, who won the Big 12, beat WVU at home 49-0. That’s how big the gap is as of Nov. 29, 2025.
Rodriguez felt like he had closed that gap with the offseason moves. He invested a lot of money in a big freshman/JUCO class, picking up three 4-stars. Rodriguez also picked up some impact transfers. He’s building this program from the ground up.
“We intentionally took a lot more high school guys,” Rodriguez said. “We don’t have 40-some seniors that are going to be one-and-done. We’ve got 21 or 22 seniors, and everybody else are guys that we want to have now and want to keep and finish their careers here. I think we’re able to build it the way I wanted to, and we should get better every year.”
It makes sense. Rodriguez would rather take a few years building up a young group of players than spend a lot more each year on experienced players, like the Red Raiders did this past season. WVU has money, but can’t afford to compete with some of the biggest schools in the nation.
“You can correct mistakes or get better in a hurry, but that takes money, a lot of money,” Rodriguez said. “We have some. We had more than we did a year ago. But, we don’t have messing around money, where you can make a whole lot of mistakes.”
That puts a ton of pressure on him and his coaching staff. Rodriguez has to coach the team to become worth the investment.
It’s a risky strategy, especially if the results don’t improve from Year 1 to Year 2. After all the work he’s done in the offseason constructing this team, Rodriguez has just as much work getting this new team ready for the 2026 season, where the expectations become even heavier.
Rodriguez recalled what he learned while at Glenville State from coach Bobby Bowden. Bowden told Rodriguez during his coaching career you’re going to go through four phases. Heading into 2026, Rodriguez is hoping he’s in phase two, maybe phase three if he’s lucky.
“You’re gonna lose big, lose close, win close, and win big,” Rodriguez said. “It’s funny how that kind of worked out. And Glenville was kind of that way, worked out for us. Now in this day and age, you don’t want to lose big and lose close, because that’s two years of losing. If you lose big, like we lost big, you’d better at least win close now, right? But it’s challenging.”
