Rich Rodriguez is climbing back up the coaching ladder, and he is doing so in a place that will be very familiar to him.
Rodriguez is close to a deal to become the new head coach at West Virginia, according to Pete Thamel of ESPN. No agreement has been reached yet, but the two sides are close.
Sources: West Virginia is targeting Rich Rodriguez as the school’s next head coach. A deal is working toward completion, but yet to finalized. Rodriguez, 61, went 60-26 in his seven year there from 2001-07, including three-straight 10-win seasons. pic.twitter.com/GyjjnQPBwI
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) December 11, 2024
Rodriguez returns to the school where he made himself famous, and he does so 15 years after he left. He went 60-26 in a seven-year stretch there from 2001 to 2007, a stretch that included a pair of BCS bowl wins. He jumped to Michigan ahead of the 2008 season, where he went just 15-22 over three seasons. He resurfaced with Arizona, where he went 43-35 before being fired amid a workplace misconduct allegation. He has been the head coach at Jacksonville State since 2022, and has posted three consecutive nine-win seasons there.
West Virginia has never quite reached the same heights that they did under Rodriguez. Previous coach Neal Brown was fired in the aftermath of a 6-6 campaign, though the team did go 9-4 in 2023. Rodriguez has certainly seen it all since leaving Morgantown, and it would really be something if he was able to capture anything close to the same success this time around.
