Rich Rodriguez details challenges of recruiting in NIL era

When Rich Rodriguez wrapped up his first stint at West Virginia, NIL was 14 years away. Now, he’s back in Morgantown – and he’s adapting to the new landscape.

Rodriguez spent the last three years at Jacksonville State, including the last two at the FBS level in Conference USA. That gave him a taste of what it’s like navigating the intersection of NIL and the transfer portal.

Now, he’s back in a power conference at his alma mater. Rodriguez noted the amount of changes since he last roamed the sidelines at WVU, particularly the “open free agency” of the transfer portal every offseason.

“The goalposts have certainly moved a long way, and you have to adapt to it,” Rodriguez said on the College GameDay podcast. “You just throw your hands up. … This is really hard to build a program when you have open free agency every year.

“The NIL and paying them is one part. It’s like the NFL on steroids. But the biggest part is the open free agency. There’s no rookie salary cap, there’s no three-year contracts. That makes it really, really difficult. But that is what it is.”

However, Rich Rodriguez also stressed the importance of sticking to a plan to create a “culture” within a program. With so much roster movement during the transfer windows, he noted the need to stay transparent with players about their development and not getting too far away from the process in place.

“You have to [say], okay, how do I adjust to this new thing and still have the right culture?” Rodriguez said. “Everybody uses that word, ‘culture,’ but do they live it every day? Do they adhere to it in the way they go acquire players, develop players, build their roster. And that’s one thing I said from the start. We’re going to be okay [in] the rev-share world. We’re not going to have in the pre-rev share all the money – maybe somebody else does – but we can still have the best culture. And you have to adhere to that and you have to be disciplined enough that this is how you’re going to pay your guys, this is how you’re going to run your team, this is your salary cap and everybody’s got to understand that.

“You’ve got to be open and honest with your players. We’ve done that – we’ve tried to do that in the last four or five months – and that way, our culture’s going to be set for not just now, but next year and the year after that.”