Rich Rodriguez's return to WVU was blast from past

When West Virginia brought back Rich Rodriguez to lead its football program for the 2025 season, it was a real turn back the clock moment as a middling program tried to rediscover some of its recent glory. 

Rodriguez gave Mountaineers fans a taste of that on Saturday afternoon in a 45-3 win over Robert Morris, where he unleashed the type of offense everybody in Morgantown used to love from him. 

The Mountaineers had 11 different ball-carriers combined for 52 carries, 371 rushing yards and five touchdowns in the rout. 

During Rodriguez's first run with West Virginia between the 2001 and 2007 seasons, he brought a dynamic — and at the time, innovative — rushing attack that opposing defenses were unable to slow down. They ran through, around and over teams and put together one of the best extended stretches of success in the history of the program. 

That included the 2007 season, where the Mountaineers reached their highest ranking ever in the AP poll (No. 2) and were knocking on the door of a national championship game appearance. 

Rodriguez eventually left West Virginia after that season for Michigan, starting a journeyman phase of his career that also included stops at Arizona and Jacksonville State. 

Rodriguez's offense has not really changed much from those early days in West Virginia, where it was still a relatively new thing in college football. Nobody else was doing it, and anybody who tried was not doing it as well as West Virginia was. 

The rest of the country has since caught up to that offense, and it remains to be seen if Rodriguez and West Virginia can recapture the same magic they had together. One game against an FCS team is not going to be an accurate read on that. 

The important thing, however, is the mindset, and it was back on Saturday.

The Mountaineers have not been ranked since the 2018 season and have seen the program slide into consistent mediocrity. They needed a change and a spark, just as they did when Rodriguez first joined the team back in 2001. 

Rodriguez might not have been a huge success at any of his stops post-West Virginia, but his stuff worked there. A lot. Maybe it can again.