Jul. 30 — MORGANTOWN — It was in the mid-80s, a little humid and partly cloudy, but a great day for the first day of fall camp for West Virginia.
Rich Rodriguez went out for his first practice of the 2025 season as the 36th coach of West Virginia. But it wasn’t his first preseason practice for the Mountaineers. This is actually his eighth preseason camp at WVU, not counting the ones he attended as an assistant or player. Rodriguez hadn’t quite had one like this.
Rodriguez went out to practice in khaki shorts, a striped WVU polo and a white West Virginia hat. He also grabbed a roster list, with the names and background of each of his players, just in case.
“I can recognize the faces now, and I know the positions, ” Rodriguez said. “But, I don’t know a lot of them as well as I need to know. That’s what part of our next 20 days is going to be. We’re going to spend a lot of time together.”
Rodriguez completely overhauled last year’s WVU roster, which finished 6-7 and 6-6 under former head coach Neal Brown. Rodriguez is figuring out the names of the 70-plus players brought via the winter and spring portal, on top of the new faces he already had to learn when he took the job, making it 115.
There are some familiar faces to help. Rodriguez hired a lot of his former players on his coaching staff and former coaches he’s coached alongside. He also added some Jacksonville State players from the team he coached to the Conference USA Championship in 2024.
Rodriguez has what he calls “fireside chats ” in the evenings when a group of staff members, coaches, and players meet together for 15 minutes when it’s quieted down to get to know each other.
“I love doing that because all these guys, coaches, staff members, players. They all have unique stories, ” Rodriguez said. “I kind of enjoy the quote-unquote fireside chats as much as anything we do during camp because I don’t know all these guys well.”
With all the new faces, there’s no set ones, twos or threes on the depth chart. Every position is up for grabs. Usually, a coach yells out first team offense on the field, but there is no first team or second team yet.
Rodriguez said when WVU had team sessions during the first practice, he leaned more toward the players with more experience.
“I tell the guys, we have to put some group out there, ” Rodriguez said. “We got to have 11. I don’t even like calling them the ones, twos, threes and fours. It should be like Group A, B, C or D, or something. It sorts itself out pretty good.”
The first day of camp was a lot of learning. Whether it was names or new schemes. Or learning to drink more water. Rodriguez requires a lot out of his players. It’s a lot of volume, especially running a tempo offense. In the mid-80-degree heat, a lot of players cramped up.
“At the end of practice, we had a dozen guys cramping up a bit, being a little dehydrated, ” Rodriguez said. “It was a good lesson for our guys to make sure they stay hydrated after practice, before practice, during practice and anytime in between, so they get through practice. We weren’t even two hours, but it’s good.”
There’s a lot to learn during camp, and like not drinking enough water, there are mistakes. Rodriguez actually said the mistakes are helping him know names because he’ll go “who’s that guy ?”
Despite being a tougher coach, Rodriguez is giving players leeway on certain things, especially since it was just the first day, and the players don’t even have pads on yet.
“I don’t want to drop a guy in grease if he has one bad day, ” Rodriguez said. “Now, it depends on what. If they are loafing, or they’re soft, now that’s got to be corrected right away. That’s the part we tell our players. The schematic part, it takes a while, whatever, but if you loaf today, you better not be loafing tomorrow.”
There’s a lot of work to be done before the official start of the season, now under a month away, on Aug. 30 against Robert Morris. This was just the first day of practice, and these first couple of practices will mainly be for evaluation to find out what Rodriguez has with his 115-player roster.
At times, it’s frustrating for Rodriguez because he’s anxious to get to the schemes, but right now, it’s seeing who can best run it.
“We got to do a lot of evaluation with so many new guys, ” Rodriguez said. “We have to have a lot of evaluations taking place throughout the course of practice. Obviously, we still got to teach the fundamental part of it and teach schemes. Typically, your first camp together is most difficult from a time standpoint, because of all the evaluations. Even the guys that played a little bit last year, which there are not many of them, we still got to evaluate.”
