Everything Rich Rodriguez Said at His Introductory Press Conference

Full quotes from West Virginia's new head football coach.

West Virginia University Vice President and Director of Athletics Wren Baker introduces football head coach Rich Rodriguez / Christopher Hall - West Virginia on SI

Friday afternoon, West Virginia Director of Athletics Wren Baker officially introduced Rich Rodriguez as the next head football coach of the Mountaineers.

Below are full quotes from today's press conference.

Opening statement

“Gosh, it’s great. This is really surreal. It is great to be home. Should have never left. I am very, very appreciative of the opportunity to come back home to be your head football coach at West Virginia University.”

“I want every player that ever played for any coach here at West Virginia - from Coach Bowden to Coach Cignetti to Coach Nehlen to myself to Coach Holgorsen to Coach Brown to Coach Stewart - every one of you former athletes you are always welcome to come back home to West Virginia. Always.”

Dealing with some WVU fans that are still mad about 17 years ago

“I understand that there’s fans that are upset. At least they care, right? Sometimes, not everything is as you think it is. But I made a mistake. My promise to not just the folks that are upset, but to everybody here and everybody that’s been very, very supportive…I will earn your support. We will earn your support and your trust back. I’m committed to that, and I’ve thought about that even before this opportunity. This is my home. This is such a great state. I’ll prove to them that the man to my right made the right decision.”

Criticism about not having success at Power Four level in several years

“There’s a lot of opinions and a lot of them are uneducated and some of them don’t know the resources. But what we’ve tried to do at every place we’ve been to is build the best football program in America and some had different challenges. I’m really proud of what happened at Jax State, the players, and the staff we had there. We went from a 1-AA team to a 1-A team and nobody’s ever done that and went to two straight bowls and won a conference championship in their second year. There’s a lot of Power Four teams that wouldn’t want to play Jax State right now, I can tell you that. As I mentioned earlier, if I was the same coach now that I was in 2007, then I didn’t follow my own guidelines for my players and my staff about getting better every day. I know the landscape has changed. The goalposts have moved and we’ve moved with it. The great part about it is that this opportunity for me was so good not only because it was home. Not only because I wanted to come back and make it right, but because the school, Wren (Baker), and everybody associated with President Gee and the Board are committed to us having a seat at the table and trying to win. They’re not just trying to compete. They want to win and we’re used to winning here.”

Biggest challenge in recruiting now

“The biggest thing that’s changed is the transfer portal. Guys are free agents every year and they’re getting paid. Not all this stuff is all bad but you got to be positioned to do it. When Coach Nehlen was here winning, when I had some success here, whenever they had success here, you got really, really good players and you coached them really hard. That formula has not changed and that’s the key to our success. We’re going to find really good players that want to be at West Virginia, and they’re going to play really hard, and then we’ll win.”

Length of contract

“I’ve got a five-year contract, but I would have signed a lifetime contract. But then if I Iost, you would have killed me.”

The difference in recruiting now vs. 2001

“The difference in recruiting is we’re recruiting right now because we’re in the transfer portal. Typically, December was a quieter time, first couple of weeks in January was a quieter time and then you hope you signed everybody in February. Now you got guys in the portal for a week and a half or so, and you got to try to retain guys. I don’t want to lose any really good players going in the portal, so that’s the first priority. The second priority is we better try to find some guys that we need out of the portal. We’ve got to evaluate our current players and how good they are and then we’ve got to be completely honest with our guys not just now, but certainly in the spring where they stand. I don’t want to have a guy and tell him you’re going to be a starter, but he’s going to be a third-team guy and he probably needs to go somewhere else.”

The challenge of the Big 12 versus his days in the Big East

“I don’t know that from a football standpoint ability-wise or schematic-wise or what have you that it’s a whole lot different. It’s just a difference in the location. Most of the schools in the Big East you’re competing against them in recruiting because everybody is in the same region. Now, everybody is everywhere but so is recruiting is everywhere because of the transfer portal. When I was talking to Wren about that and looking at the Big 12, I’m like, I’m more familiar with these teams than maybe any other league because of my time in the PAC 12. You’re talking about Arizona, Arizona State, Utah…even played BYU a couple of times. I probably know those programs, know those regions, know how they recruit or how they’ve recruited in the past more than any other league.”

Expectations for playing style of the defense

“It depends on the coordinator I hire. I’ve got a couple that I’ve talked to and they’re different. And everybody runs the same of everything now defensively whether it’s an odd-stack or an even front. Everybody has certain personnel packages they use for their own defense, but I’m going to pick the d coordinator first. I’ll have a really good one because I have enough resources to hire a really, really good one and then from there, I’ll build out the defensive staff. There’s not one particular scheme that I want other than that I want to be really aggressive and force the issue so to speak on the other team.”

Still playing with an uptempo offense

“The tempo and playing fast, I always thought…who wants to watch a bunch of fat guys hold hands in a huddle? When we huddle up, it’s like a trick play for us. When you’re sitting in the stands, I want to give you enough time…I guess we sell beer now, right? We’re going to have enough time and TV timeouts and change of possessions when you can buy your beer, but when we’re on offense you’re not going to have time to buy it between the plays.”

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