Slap in the Face? ESPN Analyst Glosses Over WVU in College Football Tiers List

Originally posted on West Virginia Mountaineers on SI
By Schuyler Callihan | Last updated Aug 18, 2025 11:26 AM ET

It's reasonable to think West Virginia could be in for a long season in year one of Rich Rodriguez's return. It's no surprise that expectations are rather low when the majority of the roster has never taken a single snap in a Mountaineer uniform, but many of WVU's projected starters and top contributors have played a lot of football and produced at other places.

ESPN's David Hale recently put all 136 FBS teams into tiers, twenty of them to be exact. He put the Mountaineers in Tier No. 14, labeled "Room for improvement" which also features Arizona, Northwestern, Oklahoma State, UCF, and Wake Forest.

"Aside from the surprising 9-4 season in 2023, West Virginia has won either five or six games every year since 2019." Hale said.

I don't have a problem with the tier West Virginia is in, necessarily, or even the teams they're packaged with. I get it. It's year one, there are many unknowns, yet all hope isn't lost.

The lack of discussion about their situation is what I consider a slap in the face to the Mountaineers. All this hype surrounding Rich Rod's return, and there's only one sentence written on the team, which pertains to the previous regime? Seriously?

Every other team in this tier had 3-5 sentences of analysis. WVU's part feels forced and lacking actual reason as to why they're included in this bunch. Sure, they've lost a ton of games over the past six years, but what does that have to do with this team or this coach?

I believe WVU would have been a much better fit in Hale's potential sleepers tier, which features Cincinnati, Colorado, Houston, North Carolina, Pitt, Rutgers, and Virginia. And even some of those teams have much lower ceilings than the Mountaineers, namely, Houston and Virginia.

The Cavaliers are 11-23 in three seasons under Tony Elliott. Willie Fritz went 4-8 in his first year at Houston. And you could even talk about Pitt being wrongfully placed, too. They lost six straight games to end the 2024 season, including to Toledo. That's a sleeper?