FRISCO, Texas - In prior years, when a college football coach went on vacation in July, he had a pretty good idea who most of his starters were before the start of preseason camp.

Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said today at Big 12 Media Days that he might be able to name eight of his 22 starters, which is considerably more than West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez knows right now.

"I might not know five," Rodriguez says, "but I feel like we've got a dozen or so guys I think we can win with, so that's a good thing."

Currently, Rodriguez is welcoming 74 new players this season, which represents about 70% of his football team. 

He admits that part can be pretty unnerving.

"I think it's good because we lost a lot of seniors and we needed a whole new group of replacements, but at the same time the unknowns make you nervous," he said. "It's kind of like, 'Well, this is what we're going to feature on offense, and this is what we are going to do on defense,' but we've still got to figure out what we do well. This August is going to be the most important time, not only figuring out who we got, but what we can do with them."

When you factor in an entirely new football staff, those 30 days beginning on Wednesday, July 30, until Friday, Aug. 29 - a day before the season opener against Robert Morris, are going to be vitally important for the Mountaineers.

A lot of the coaches on Rodriguez's staff have worked together before in some capacity, but not as a full group, so there are lots of moving parts he must address.

"We've got a plan. I'm not worried about it. I'm actually kind of looking forward to it, and usually the most enjoyable (aspect of coaching) is putting it all together that first year," he explained.

Rodriguez said he liked what his team accomplished in June up through the July 4th break, and with roughly three weeks left before camp begins, he believes his players are embracing what is being asked of them.

The veteran coach spent this past spring reluctant to single out individual players, and he continues to be vague in terms of what they can do. That's because he simply doesn't know enough about them yet.

"Until we go against each other a little bit and play somebody else, I don't really have anything to compare them to," Rodriguez pointed out. "Until we play a game, it's still going to be figuring out what we've got."

And that includes Preseason All-Big 12 running back Jahiem White, who was limited for most of spring practice.  

Can White run the football more than 200 times in a season like some of Rodriguez's most productive feature backs have in the past?

Avon Cobourne carried the football 335 times at West Virginia in 2002. A year later, Quincy Wilson got 282 carries, and Steve Slaton ran the ball 248 times for the Mountaineers in 2006. When he was at Arizona, Rodriguez gave Ka'Deem Carey the football 349 times in 2013, and Tre Stewart had 278 rushes last year at Jacksonville State.

Even quarterback Denard Robinson ran the ball 256 times for Rodriguez at Michigan in 2010.

White got 109 carries two years ago and 148 last year in Neal Brown's offense.

It will probably take Rodriguez a couple weeks of practice in August to know if the junior is capable of handling that many carries.

Rodriguez has run the gamut, from small college football at Glenville State to major college football at Michigan. In between have been head coaching stops at West Virginia, Arizona and Jacksonville State. He says his formula has always been to find the best players that he can get, whether that's transfer portal, junior college or high school guys.

"Ideally, you'd like for them to have three or four years so you can build them in your program. This past year, we had to get what we could get," he said. "Next year, we will have a lot more high school guys than transfer guys, and that will probably be the formula going forward. I'm not trying to overthink it because we're never going to turn down a great player."

In the order of things that needs to be establish, acquiring talent is always No. 1, but conditioning and toughness are two aspects the coaching staff can establish right away. The toughness and "hard-edge" play that Rodriguez talks about must be unique to West Virginia and something that sets his program apart from the other teams on its schedule.

There were many times last year, and in recent years, when that wasn't the case.

"(Toughness) is what is going to separate us, and we're going to get talent," he predicted. "And our environment is going to help. I'm talking about coming to a game and watching a game here. It's different, and I think that's one thing that we have an advantage.

"I haven't been in this league yet, but I know what it's like to play a game in sold-out Mountaineer Field, and I know what it's like to play here, and it's different than a lot of the teams in our league and that's an advantage to us," Rodriguez pointed out.

The process of studying the Big 12 teams is underway, and Rodriguez admits he's impressed with what he's seen so far.

"It's a really good quarterback league with really talented teams," he said. "We've done our summer scouts, but I haven't done too much because there are a lot of teams that are just like us. I don't know who they've got either.

"Scheme-wise, we do a lot of stuff defensively and offensively; we're not that complicated, but we can be," Rodriguez said. "Execution is more important to me than fancy play calls. We will be a little different than we were a year ago, and we will be a little different next year than we are this year."

As he counts down the remaining days until preseason training camp, Rodriguez said he will take what he learned last year incorporating a large influx of new players at Jacksonville State and use that this year at West Virginia.

"We thought we were ready the first game and we weren't, so I've reviewed how we went about doing it and some of it was leading up to the summer, and some of it we were doing too much in all phases," he explained. "Our first game, we weren't executing because we were doing too much, so I'm very conscious of that."

Finally, Rodriguez indicated that this year's roster is nearly complete except for a couple of players who are still dealing with some eligibility issues.

"The good part about it is they are all here this summer; we are not waiting on anybody to get here in August," he concluded.