Photo by: Jim Crawford/Paradise Jam
Football Offseason Brings Plenty of Opinions and Ideas About the Mountaineers
June 17, 2025 02:50 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – It's that time of year when lists and opinions have taken over college football. In other words, as my good buddy Jed Drenning loves to say, there's not a whole lot of hard news happening right now.
WVU defensive coordinator Zac Alley was a recent visitor on the "3 Guys Before The Game" podcast and one of the big takeaways from that interview was his belief that West Virginia can be a "sleeping giant."
That's one of the reasons he said he left Oklahoma to coordinate coach Rich Rodriguez's Mountaineer defense.
Pro Football Focus has Jacksonville State transfer Cam Vaughn rated as the fourth-highest graded wide receiver in the Big 12 heading into 2025, behind just TCU's Jordan Dwyer, Kansas' Bryson Canty and TCU's Eric McAlister.
That caught some people's attention.
I noticed a summer ranking of the top 16 Big 12 head coaches from worst to first, and the criteria used was a blending of career history, consistency, winning on the big stage and the ability to develop talent.
I'll let you Google search that one.
Recruiting news is always popular in June and July as high school players attend camps, visit campuses and begin to narrow down their college choices.
The Mountaineers have landed several commitments during the last week or so.
Rodriguez spent a week in early May visiting different parts of the state as part of the Mountaineer Athletic Club's Coaches Caravan, which wrapped up in Wheeling on May 12.
He also was a guest last month on the "Triple Option" podcast hosted by Urban Meyer, Mark Ingram II and Rob Stone.
Most of what Coach Rod told them he has already told us during his spring football media availability sessions.
Perhaps the most fascinating part of that interview, however, came near the end of the podcast when Rodriguez was given an opportunity to ask the podcasters a question. What he asked was probably the best question I've heard anyone come up with in a long, long time.
"Other than having really good players, what is the common factor to those teams that have been better than everyone else the last two years (during the transfer portal and Name, Image and Likeness era)?" he asked them.
Meyer, a three-time national champion coach who won a Big Ten title during his final season at Ohio State in 2018, answered immediately.
"It's a no-brainer," he said. "With this NIL, and what I witnessed what (Michigan) and (Ohio State) have done the last two years, you've got grown-ass men in that locker room. My best teams were when I had men, not boys, in my locker room.
"You look at the Wolverines (in 2023) and the Buckeyes (in 2024), and they all came back, so it's not the 17- and 18-year-olds; you've got 21-year-old dudes that have been through the wars," he said. "As I'm watching these teams, I started reflecting back and my best teams were the same way. I had the (Maurkice) Pounceys and the guys who didn't put up with any $%#^! The locker room was the locker room."
Meyer added, "I know Penn State is trying to do the same thing this year because a lot of those kids came back where in the old days, they all left because they had to get paid (in the NFL). Now, they are getting paid (in college)."
What an observation!
The current template for success in the Big 12 has been established in Tempe, Arizona. Second-year coach Kenny Dillingham defied expectations last season by taking a team that was predicted to finish last in the conference to the college football playoffs.
The Sun Devils were one play away from upsetting Texas and advancing to the semifinals after rallying from a 16-point deficit.
Dillingham did it with Sacramento State transfer running back Cam Skattebo, Michigan State transfer quarterback Sam Leavitt and other highly competitive portal players who fit the strong culture that he established during his first season there in 2023.
Here in Morgantown, we've heard Rich Rod consistently talk about establishing his culture and then finding players who can fit into it.
He did that during his two seasons at Jacksonville State, and, despite having a completely new team last year, led the Gamecocks to a Conference USA championship during their inaugural season at the FBS level.
Now that he's back at WVU, 24 transfer players were recently announced, including eight from other power four programs. His coaches signed seven high school and junior college prospects last February, one month after revealing a 29-player January portal class, of which 27 are still here after the spring.
Twenty of the 22 players inherited from Neal Brown's December signing class are still in the fold, which means there are many more new players than returning ones on the roster right now.
When you add those two portal groups together, that's 51 new players with some sort of college experience coming to play for the Mountaineers this fall.
Yes, West Virginia's 2025 roster is new, but it's not necessarily young.
Last year, Rich Rod got a remodeled Gamecocks roster turned around after an 0-3 start to their season.
"After our first year at Jax State, we had seven or eight players that moved up to power four programs," he noted. "They got bought, and we knew it was coming. We had 60 new players on last year's team, and so when we started off 0-3, everyone was kind of panicking, and I'm like, 'We're going to be okay. Most of our guys didn't get here until the summer and it's taking us a little longer to acclimate them.'
"What I learned from that is we better speed that process up," Rodriguez added. "Once they got comfortable with our system, they kind of took off."
Those are comforting words. If anything, Arizona State, and TCU a couple of years ago, taught us not to pay too much attention to preseason rankings.
For those of you old enough to remember Rodriguez's Mountaineer teams in the early 2000s, not to mention the two he coached at Jacksonville State, he has consistently demonstrated an ability to get his teams better during the season.
And on the "The Triple Option" podcast, Meyer reminded us that counting birthdays can be just as important as counting recruiting stars.
Those are some things to ponder while you are browsing the preseason magazines at the beach this summer.
WVU defensive coordinator Zac Alley was a recent visitor on the "3 Guys Before The Game" podcast and one of the big takeaways from that interview was his belief that West Virginia can be a "sleeping giant."
That's one of the reasons he said he left Oklahoma to coordinate coach Rich Rodriguez's Mountaineer defense.
Pro Football Focus has Jacksonville State transfer Cam Vaughn rated as the fourth-highest graded wide receiver in the Big 12 heading into 2025, behind just TCU's Jordan Dwyer, Kansas' Bryson Canty and TCU's Eric McAlister.
That caught some people's attention.
I noticed a summer ranking of the top 16 Big 12 head coaches from worst to first, and the criteria used was a blending of career history, consistency, winning on the big stage and the ability to develop talent.
I'll let you Google search that one.
Recruiting news is always popular in June and July as high school players attend camps, visit campuses and begin to narrow down their college choices.
The Mountaineers have landed several commitments during the last week or so.
Rodriguez spent a week in early May visiting different parts of the state as part of the Mountaineer Athletic Club's Coaches Caravan, which wrapped up in Wheeling on May 12.
He also was a guest last month on the "Triple Option" podcast hosted by Urban Meyer, Mark Ingram II and Rob Stone.
Most of what Coach Rod told them he has already told us during his spring football media availability sessions.
Perhaps the most fascinating part of that interview, however, came near the end of the podcast when Rodriguez was given an opportunity to ask the podcasters a question. What he asked was probably the best question I've heard anyone come up with in a long, long time.
"Other than having really good players, what is the common factor to those teams that have been better than everyone else the last two years (during the transfer portal and Name, Image and Likeness era)?" he asked them.
Meyer, a three-time national champion coach who won a Big Ten title during his final season at Ohio State in 2018, answered immediately.
"It's a no-brainer," he said. "With this NIL, and what I witnessed what (Michigan) and (Ohio State) have done the last two years, you've got grown-ass men in that locker room. My best teams were when I had men, not boys, in my locker room.
"You look at the Wolverines (in 2023) and the Buckeyes (in 2024), and they all came back, so it's not the 17- and 18-year-olds; you've got 21-year-old dudes that have been through the wars," he said. "As I'm watching these teams, I started reflecting back and my best teams were the same way. I had the (Maurkice) Pounceys and the guys who didn't put up with any $%#^! The locker room was the locker room."
Meyer added, "I know Penn State is trying to do the same thing this year because a lot of those kids came back where in the old days, they all left because they had to get paid (in the NFL). Now, they are getting paid (in college)."
What an observation!
The current template for success in the Big 12 has been established in Tempe, Arizona. Second-year coach Kenny Dillingham defied expectations last season by taking a team that was predicted to finish last in the conference to the college football playoffs.
The Sun Devils were one play away from upsetting Texas and advancing to the semifinals after rallying from a 16-point deficit.
Dillingham did it with Sacramento State transfer running back Cam Skattebo, Michigan State transfer quarterback Sam Leavitt and other highly competitive portal players who fit the strong culture that he established during his first season there in 2023.
Here in Morgantown, we've heard Rich Rod consistently talk about establishing his culture and then finding players who can fit into it.
He did that during his two seasons at Jacksonville State, and, despite having a completely new team last year, led the Gamecocks to a Conference USA championship during their inaugural season at the FBS level.
Now that he's back at WVU, 24 transfer players were recently announced, including eight from other power four programs. His coaches signed seven high school and junior college prospects last February, one month after revealing a 29-player January portal class, of which 27 are still here after the spring.
Twenty of the 22 players inherited from Neal Brown's December signing class are still in the fold, which means there are many more new players than returning ones on the roster right now.
When you add those two portal groups together, that's 51 new players with some sort of college experience coming to play for the Mountaineers this fall.
Yes, West Virginia's 2025 roster is new, but it's not necessarily young.
Last year, Rich Rod got a remodeled Gamecocks roster turned around after an 0-3 start to their season.
"After our first year at Jax State, we had seven or eight players that moved up to power four programs," he noted. "They got bought, and we knew it was coming. We had 60 new players on last year's team, and so when we started off 0-3, everyone was kind of panicking, and I'm like, 'We're going to be okay. Most of our guys didn't get here until the summer and it's taking us a little longer to acclimate them.'
"What I learned from that is we better speed that process up," Rodriguez added. "Once they got comfortable with our system, they kind of took off."
Those are comforting words. If anything, Arizona State, and TCU a couple of years ago, taught us not to pay too much attention to preseason rankings.
For those of you old enough to remember Rodriguez's Mountaineer teams in the early 2000s, not to mention the two he coached at Jacksonville State, he has consistently demonstrated an ability to get his teams better during the season.
And on the "The Triple Option" podcast, Meyer reminded us that counting birthdays can be just as important as counting recruiting stars.
Those are some things to ponder while you are browsing the preseason magazines at the beach this summer.
Players Mentioned
WR
/ FootballRich Rodriguez | Dec. 3
Wednesday, December 03
Reid Carrico | Nov. 29
Saturday, November 29
Jeff Weimer | Nov. 29
Saturday, November 29
Rich Rodriguez | Nov. 29
Saturday, November 29
