West Virginia is flying under the radar in 2026, and it’s not difficult to see why. Everyone, including national college football analysts, was expecting Rich Rodriguez to flip this program around immediately.
The reality is that year one was always going to be challenging, and the never-ending list of injuries just made the situation a whole lot worse than it was already going to be. Just because Rodriguez didn’t deliver early 2000s type of results in his first year back in Morgantown doesn’t mean he won’t do it at some point in his second go around as the head Mountaineer.
That said, last year’s 4-8 start and the massive roster turnover have scared a lot of folks off of the Mountaineers, even creating some doubt that Rodriguez will get it turned around. CBS Sports recently had a panel of 10 voters rank the best head coaches in all of college football, and Rich Rod checked in at No. 54, a twelve-spot drop from last year.
“Perhaps we were all a little too excited about Rich Rodriguez’s return to West Virginia last year. Forgive us, for our voting panel largely came of age when RichRod was lighting it up with the Mountaineers, and perhaps we got lost in nostalgia. The Eers went 4-8, Rodriguez’s first losing season anywhere since 2016, and it hurt him amongst our voters. That said, most of us still hope for a rekindling of those Pat White, Steve Slaton, and Noel Devine teams of yore.”
As Tom Fornelli noted in the story, there is no set criterion for the voters to use, but still…54th? What are we doing here? Is this based on a projection of the success or lack thereof that is set to come? Is it a ranking of what these coaches have done throughout their respective careers? Or is it a mixture of both? Regardless, there is no world where 53 coaches are listed ahead of Rodriguez, love him or hate him.
He has won at virtually every stop in his coaching career and has taken programs like Glenville State, West Virginia, Arizona, and Jacksonville State to heights that hadn’t been seen in a very long time, if at all.
You mean to tell me that the likes of Scott Satterfield (Cincinnati), Greg Schiano (Rutgers), Barry Odom (Purdue), Luke Fickell (Wisconsin), Dave Aranda (Baylor), Brent Brennan (Arizona), and Pat Narduzzi (Pitt) deserve to be ranked ahead of him?
How? The math isn’t mathing here.
Those are just a handful of names that are ranked higher than they should, but there’s more. I mean, let’s be real here. Schiano, Brennan, and Aranda all have losing records, and Satterfield, Odom, and Fickell are all sub .500 as Power Four coaches.
Narduzzi has won 10+ games once with zero major bowl wins, while Rodriguez has won 10+ four times and one major bowl win, plus the Fiesta if you want to give him partial credit for the Mountaineers beating Oklahoma in 2007. Even if you don’t, it’s still one more than Narduzzi, who has never had his team inside the top 10. Rodriguez has had his team inside the top 10 in five different seasons.
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