Dec 28, 2021; Phoenix, AZ, USA; West Virginia Mountaineers tight ends coach Travis Trickett against the Minnesota Golden Gophers in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl at Chase Field. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

What Does Travis Trickett Do as a Senior Assistant at WVU? He Reveals What His Job Entails

Originally posted on West Virginia Mountaineers on SI
By Schuyler Callihan | Last updated Aug 2, 2025 9:29 AM ET

Travis Trickett is back for his third tour of duty coaching at West Virginia. He got his start in the industry back in the early 2000s under Rich Rodriguez as a student assistant, leading to similar opportunities at Alabama and Florida State.

In 2019, he returned to Morgantown as the inside receivers/tight ends coach for Neal Brown. After three years on the job, he left to become the offensive coordinator at South Florida. Following a brief stint in Tampa, Trickett took the OC job at Coastal Carolina and actually went up against Rich Rodriguez and Zac Alley when they were at Jacksonville State. Alley was only there for one of the two meetings, which resulted in a 30-16 Coastal win. Last year, Trickett's offense hung up 55 on the Gamecocks in a blowout win.

Now, Trickett is back in the place where it all began with the head coach who gave him that first opportunity. This time, he's not assigned to a certain position and instead is serving as a senior analyst, basically being a floater for Rodriguez. The best way to describe his role is that he's the personal assistant to Rodriguez, but he could also be considered a secondary head coach in some ways. He's not calling the shots or determining any position battles, but his job is to look at everything, much like Rodriguez does.

“So, for practice, the number one thing is just the organizational aspect of the practice to make sure everything’s ready for Coach Rod. He needs everything set up the way he needs it to be set up," Trickett said when asked to explain his role at practice. "So the first thing I’m looking at is everything the way he needs it to be? And if it’s not, then I’m alerting the coaches. After that, when it comes to a football standpoint, it’s just the big picture. We’re fortunate enough now that with the staff that we have is Coach Rod is big picture play-caller, I’m his assistant as far as the big picture aspect, and then feed him information. And then all the position coaches can now just focus in on coaching their individual position at a high level. It’s really an assignment-based staff where you should be really efficient with the numbers that we have as a staff, and it allows us to give our players individual attention. Coach can just coach, I can look at the overall operation, and then give big picture thoughts. And if we split up practice, he’s on one side and I’m on the other.”

Trickett coached the running backs during the spring after Chad Scott departed for the opportunity at Texas, meaning he's checked off every position aside from the offensive line. Trickett joked that although he hasn't coached offensive line, he knows a thing or two about it, considering he's the son of longtime offensive line coach Rick Trickett

"Luckily, I was born into an offensive line household. So, I’ve got some experience, about 41 years of being around an offensive line coach, so I have a little bit of an idea on that.”