West Virginia Football Coach Stresses Importance of Culture in New NIL Era

When Rich Rodriguez took over in his first stint as head coach of the West Virginia Mountaineers, the college football landscape was devoid of NIL. 

Rodriguez has seen a lot of changes since the last time he led the Mountaineers, many of them centered on the intricacies of NIL and the transfer portal. 

In his last two seasons at Jacksonville State, Rodriguez oversaw their transition from the FCS to the FBS level, and that gave him an introduction to the state of chaos he finds himself back in within the Big 12 Conference.

He about the “open free agency” that has dominated the transfer portal and his experience back at WVU on the College Gameday Podcast. 

“The goalposts have certainly moved a long way, and you have to adapt to it,” Rodriguez said. “You just throw your hands up … This is really hard to build a program when you have open free agency every year.” 

In line with the consensus criticism by numerous college football head coaches, the issue is not solely about name, image, and likeness, nor is it primarily about player movement.

It’s the absence of stability that comes with typical contracts seen at the professional level.

“The NIL and paying them is one part,” Rodriguez said. “It’s like the NFL on steroids. But the biggest part is the open free agency. There’s no rookie salary cap, and there are no three-year contracts. That makes it really, really difficult. But that is what it is.” 

Ultimately, unpalatable as it may be, the landscape of college sports isn’t changing in the foreseeable future. Head coaches need to have a plan to calm the waters, and many are finding that emphasis inside their programs.

Rodriguez’s Plan for Stability in Chaos of NIL

The importance of development, team fit and culture has depreciated in the discussion of NIL, particularly when it comes to multimillion-dollar contracts for quarterbacks to transfer.

“You have to say, okay, how do I adjust to this new thing and still have the right culture?” Rodriguez said. “Everybody uses that word, ‘culture,’ but do they live it every day? Do they adhere to it in the way they go acquire players, develop players, and build their roster? And that’s one thing I said from the start. We’re going to be okay [in] the rev-share world. We’re not going to have in the pre-rev share all the money—maybe somebody else does—but we can still have the best culture.”

It’s not just about culture, but the discipline to implement it in all facets, from how they pay their players to how they run their team, how the salary cap will be divided and how all people in the building need to come to understand that standard.

Rodriguez has a salient point with the term “culture” being thrown around loosely without it always being a tangible thing coaches can point to or players can see.

At West Virginia, Rodriguez intends that to mean direct communication with players, transparency about their place on the roster and trajectory of development and not losing sight of the forest for the trees. 

“You’ve got to be open and honest with your players. We’ve done that—we’ve tried to do that in the last four or five months—and that way, our culture’s going to be set for not just now, but next year and the year after that.”

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