Mar. 29—MORGANTOWN — There's no question college football is rapidly changing. Players are getting paid, universities are signing lucrative television deals and players can jump into the transfer portal and completely flip a roster. College football isn't the same as it was back in the day or even 10 years ago.
This rapid change has pushed out legendary coaches. The great Nick Saban retired and blamed name, image and likeness as the culprit.
Old-school coaches don't want to adapt. However, it's drawing in new, old NFL, coaches to the collegiate ranks like Bill Belichick because the NCAA is slowly adopting a professional model.
West Virginia football coach Rich Rodriguez isn't a new coach and isn't a former NFL coach. He started his coaching career in 1985, is 61 years old and is anti-TikTok, but he has accepted the drastic change and is in favor of the NFL model.
"I think a lot of coaches are, like older guys, old school guys, they just throw their hands up and say, 'I'm done, '" Rodriguez said. "It's frustrating, but that's a good challenge. It's a challenge. It's a new challenge. I better accept it as a new challenge and try to win at it."
Rodriguez wants there to be mini-camps, a draft and free agency. Not one for one, but an adaptation. Like how Belichick laid it out in an interview with Pat McAfee, the portal is free agency and recruiting is the draft. However, the NCAA hasn't fully committed, causing some problems.
"It makes too much sense not to follow the most successful professional organizations, " Rodriguez said. "Instead of what's the rule next week ? When you have to keep making a rule to adjust another rule, that means something needs to be fixed."
Rodriguez doesn't have the NFL coaching experience like Belichick, but WVU won't be behind in that aspect because Rodriguez said he's talked with NFL general managers and coaches in the pros about how the NFL operates.
Over the past couple of press conferences, Rodriguez was frustrated the most with the two portal windows, and he's not alone. Numerous coaches, not only in college basketball, have proposed one portal window after seeing the difficulties it's caused.
The first portal window opened during the College Football Playoff. Players on the competing teams had to decide to go out and look for a new home to get playing time or stay with their current teams and ride out the rest of the season, waiting for the spring portal.
Rodriguez voiced his opinions on the spring portal too, which comes up on April 16 and closes April 25th. The portal opens right after WVU's Gold-Blue game and final practice of the spring.
"How ridiculous is that ?" Rodriguez asked. "There's another portal thing coming up in a couple of weeks. I wasted all my time coaching this guy, getting him ready, and then he's getting a paycheck to go somewhere else."
That's the new reality in the current state of college football and is why some coaches have opted out of a spring game that's pretty much promoting your players for other teams to grab them.
Rodriguez said his squad doesn't have any players that he feels are "half in or half out yet."
Colorado coach Deion Sanders wants to practice against another team, like how the NFL has joint practices, for the Buffaloes' spring game. Rodriguez isn't opposed to the idea, reiterating his favor of the professional model. However, there are some downsides.
"You don't want to show someone out there, and then he does really good that day, and then somebody poaches him, " Rodriguez said. "I think they change the portal thing, I would be more agreeable to scrimmage against ...
